Better Analytics 3.1.1

[Dakis]

Awesome, installed and waiting data to flow in. Thank you very much!!!

 

[digitalpoint]

Awesome, installed and waiting data to flow in. Thank you very much!!!

You should be able to see it fairly instantly if you set the Analytics date range to today.

It's under Audience -> Custom -> Custom Variables

Key 1 = forum
Key 2 = user name

 

[Dakis]

I'm seeing "forum" and "username" there:

 

[digitalpoint]

Yep... click them.

 

[Dakis]

Awesome.

 

[digitalpoint]

I just noticed you have forums with non-latin characters... any issue with those forum names showing up properly in Analytics?

 

[Dakis]

No, working absolutely fine :

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

I believe that the "username" part is against the Terms of Service of Google Analytics

7. Privacy.
You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track, collect or upload any data that personally identifies an individual (such as a name, email address or billing information), or other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Google. You will have and abide by an appropriate Privacy Policy and will comply with all applicable laws and regulations relating to the collection of information from Visitors. You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies that are used to collect traffic data, and You must not circumvent any privacy features (e.g., an opt-out) that are part of the Service.

http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html

 

[digitalpoint]

Hmm... Will check into it. Although not sure a username which the user sets to anything they want is personally identifiable or not. Of course a user can choose to set their username to their real name, but that ultimately is a choice of the user, and is something they are knowingly exposing publicly already... Just like a user could set their user agent to their real name too.

But either way, will get better clarification.

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Hmm... Will check into it. Although not sure a username which the user sets to anything they want is personally identifiable or not. Of course a user can choose to set their username to their real name, but that ultimately is a choice of the user, and is something they are knowingly exposing publicly already... Just like a user could set their user agent to their real name too.

But either way, will get better clarification.

I was implementing this a while before, and asked the analytics team, the answer was that I cannot track someone individually, and a username identifies a person (from that, mapping to the email is trivial). So I just settled for tracking usergroups (visitors, registered, moderators, admins) and not individual users. They seem to be fine if you aggregate users by any category that you can come up with, but not if you track them on an individual basis.

 

[digitalpoint]

Ya, I got clarification... You *can* use something to track an individual user, but it would have to be some non-public identifier you use to cross reference which user it is.

Might not be worth the effort of generating unique IDs for this purpose.

 

[digitalpoint]

digitalpoint updated Better Analytics with a new update entry:

Removed user name tracking

Removed user name tracking per Google Analytics terms of service.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Dakis]

Meh, does that mean we can't track members VS guests anymore? Is there a way to add this?

 

[digitalpoint]

Meh, does that mean we can't track members VS guests anymore? Is there a way to add this?

For now, yes... still trying to decide if I want to go through the complexities of generating unique identifiers that allows you to cross reference which user it is. It's either going to be some cross-referencing thing or just a registered/guest thing.

For *now*, you could of course just not upgrade to 1.0.4 to leave username tracking intact if you wanted.

 

[Dakis]

I don't want to break google's rules, besides I still got what was most important to me, tracking per forum including its threads, which is great.

But it'd be very useful to have guests vs members too. I wouldn't care about the separate users - it is very interesting but not something I'd use in the long run

 

[maxicep]

Is this working for new universal analytics tracing code ? Because i was using universal tracing code on modified google_analytics template, but for now your doubleclick .js is different than universal code

 

[digitalpoint]

Is this working for new universal analytics tracing code ? Because i was using universal tracing code on modified google_analytics template, but for now your doubleclick .js is different than universal code

Nope... you lose functionality with universal analytics at this point...

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/

The dc.js JavaScript library is not supported in Universal Analytics during this phase. Users who need the following related features should wait until Phase 3 to upgrade:

• Remarketing
• Google Display Network Impression Reporting
• DoubleClick Campaign Manager Reporting
• Google Analytics Demographics and Interests Reports

 

[ForestForTrees]

Ya, I got clarification... You *can* use something to track an individual user, but it would have to be some non-public identifier you use to cross reference which user it is.

Might not be worth the effort of generating unique IDs for this purpose.

Would a simple MD5 or similar hash do?

 

[briansol]

I'm pretty sure that if you can back-trace it back to a username, it's just as 'wrong' as using the username. an md5 technically should solve that backwards motion so your idea should be acceptible

 

[digitalpoint]

I added support for custom variable dimensions to our Analytics Charts system that will generate percentage area charts so you can see how stuff trends over time.

For example, I just set it to only show forums that had at least 400 visitors per day in the chart below.

Either way, might be handy for people (obviously it works with YOUR Google Analytics data via Google Analytics API, not mine): https://tools.digitalpoint.com/analytics-charts