Better Analytics 3.1.1

[Live Free]

• No, the counter in XenForo's normal admin area and Google Analytics are two different things. The XenForo statistics doesn't feed anything into your Google Analytics account.

What I meant was that I manually set up event tracking for registrations in Google Analytics. I'm not talking about the default Xenforo statistics. Since I also have Better Analytics installed, I'm was concerned about duplicate events.

Yes, if you are using the campaign tags on your own already to track actual campaigns, use them like you normally would.

Regarding newsletters/email - Rather than sending directly thorugh the Xenforo Admincp, say I'm using a third party mailing provider (i.e. Mandrill/MailJet). Even if I send a newsletter and include utm paramaters and otherwise send the newsletter like I normally would, this would not track email sends/opens/clicks how Better Analytics does for normal transactional emails, correct? I would have to set up independent/secondary event tracking.

Although experiment management is already a future feature that's slated. But for now, it's done through the normal Google Analytics account, and I haven't personally run any ever, so...

The plan is to use it to do server-side experiments controlled through the admin area.

Hella! If experiments became a feature of Better Analytics I'd be ecstatic. I think it's essential for optimizing key metrics. I've tried running a few on Xenforo but it's not practical due to the style permission issue. I think you really need server-side experiments. Through the admincp? Even better.

Right now I'm working on getting the Goal and Experiment management into the WordPress version (the WordPress and XenForo version shared a unified code base, so it won't be hard to integrate it into the XenForo version once it's done in the WordPress version):

View attachment 110743

Very, very exciting. Only a few months out I hope?

The system feeds the user ID of the user, but not the username (user ID is not personally identifiable)... so you can get all sorts of data for that user if you apply a filter based on their user ID (that's how it gets the charts that show on the member profile "Analytics" tab). If it's something you want to display outside of the normal Google Analytics interface, you probably will want to look at Google's Core Reporting API... that's where you can basically get whatever data you want: What Is The Core Reporting API - Overview

Okay, so this would essentially be done the same way as your other charts are done. I will look into core reporting but I'm still intermediate here at best. Would compiling the type of information I stated, such as a break down of a user's posts on a per forum basis, be (relatively) difficult? I'd like to make the functionality I described a requested feature, though I understand you may not be interested.

One new question about measuring bounce rate. Like others in this thread I tracked a significant drop in bounce rate upon installing Better Analytics (the Adjusted Bounce Rate, I believe). How can I adjust this so my Bounce Rate is once again tracked as a "hard bounce"?

 

[digitalpoint]

What I meant was that I manually set up event tracking for registrations in Google Analytics. I'm not talking about the default Xenforo statistics. Since I also have Better Analytics installed, I'm was concerned about duplicate events.

If you are feeding the same events into Google Analytics by other means, then yes... they would be counted twice. Best thing to do is just disable the "User Registrations" event tracking for Better Analytics (under options).

Regarding newsletters/email - Rather than sending directly thorugh the Xenforo Admincp, say I'm using a third party mailing provider (i.e. Mandrill/MailJet). Even if I send a newsletter and include utm paramaters and otherwise send the newsletter like I normally would, this would not track email sends/opens/clicks how Better Analytics does for normal transactional emails, correct? I would have to set up independent/secondary event tracking.

Correct. If emails aren't sent from within XenForo, Better Analytics will not be able to log events for emails being sent/opened.

Hella! If experiments became a feature of Better Analytics I'd be ecstatic. I think it's essential for optimizing key metrics. I've tried running a few on Xenforo but it's not practical due to the style permission issue. I think you really need server-side experiments. Through the admincp? Even better.

Very, very exciting. Only a few months out I hope?

It's getting there... the Goal management is already part of the latest WordPress version.





I know this is screenshots from the WordPress version, but since they share a unified codebase now, it's fairly easy to bring the new stuff to XenForo now.

As far as Analytics Experiments, it's being worked on, but it's not finished yet. The plan is to be able to run a/b testing/experiments on various things. In the WordPress version, you can run variations of post/page title, apply custom CSS or just apply a totally different theme as part of the test.



Like I said, it's not done yet, but it *is* being worked on.

Okay, so this would essentially be done the same way as your other charts are done. I will look into core reporting but I'm still intermediate here at best. Would compiling the type of information I stated, such as a break down of a user's posts on a per forum basis, be (relatively) difficult? I'd like to make the functionality I described a requested feature, though I understand you may not be interested.

In theory it's possible, but the data you are talking about getting (posts broken down by user/forum) is something better to gotten directly via SQL queries against your database. You are talking about an Analytics event that creates something on your server, so you have the data to query against (the post). In fact, I kind of do something like that already with a different XenForo add-on. For example on a member's profile page, there is an "Areas" tab where you can see what sections the user posts in: digitalpoint

One new question about measuring bounce rate. Like others in this thread I tracked a significant drop in bounce rate upon installing Better Analytics (the Adjusted Bounce Rate, I believe). How can I adjust this so my Bounce Rate is once again tracked as a "hard bounce"?

Disable the "User Engagement" event tracking. That is the difference between an old bounce rate and an "adjusted" bounce rate.

 

[Blackbeard]

First this is awesome, wanted to test it out before purchasing the full featured version.
One of my heatmaps is just solid blue across the board. Where as my other site is obviously working correctly. Any suggestions where to look?

I have green checks down the board except the upgrade part.

 

[digitalpoint]

First this is awesome, wanted to test it out before purchasing the full featured version.
One of my heatmaps is just solid blue across the board. Where as my other site is obviously working correctly. Any suggestions where to look?

I have green checks down the board except the upgrade part.

What are you settings for the heat map that is showing blue across the board (metric, segment, weeks and days)? Also, make sure you select the right profile under your Statistic and Metrics settings. You can have multiple profiles under a single web property... also if it's a new profile, you would only have data going forward from the time you created it. Old profiles will show historical data just fine on the heat map.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Where in the Analytics reports do we see forum session data?
I switched it on a few days ago and I'm looing at Audience -> Custom -> Custom Variables -> Forum, but the numbers are tiny.

 

[digitalpoint]

Where in the Analytics reports do we see forum session data?
I switched it on a few days ago and I'm looing at Audience -> Custom -> Custom Variables -> Forum, but the numbers are tiny.

They aren't stored in Custom Variables, rather they are in Custom Dimensions. You would want to go to whatever normal report you are interested in breaking down by the forum, and do it from there via the "Secondary Dimension" drop-down.

For example if you don't care about primary dimensions, go to Audience -> Custom -> User Defined, then pick "Forum" from the "Secondary Dimension drop-down. Will look something like this:



If you want to get more advanced, you can break down any existing report by what forum they are using. For example if you wanted to know the gender of users broken down by the areas they use (for my site, the most popular forum for males is "PayPal", for females, it's "General Chat":

 

[arn]

They aren't stored in Custom Variables, rather they are in Custom Dimensions. You would want to go to whatever normal report you are interested in breaking down by the forum, and do it from there via the "Secondary Dimension" drop-down.

For example if you don't care about primary dimensions, go to Audience -> Custom -> User Defined, then pick "Forum" from the "Secondary Dimension drop-down. Will look something like this:

View attachment 115093

If you want to get more advanced, you can break down any existing report by what forum they are using. For example if you wanted to know the gender of users broken down by the areas they use (for my site, the most popular forum for males is "PayPal", for females, it's "General Chat":

View attachment 115095

Mine doesn't seem to be showing any data. I'm integrating google analytics through Google Tag manager if that matters.

 

[digitalpoint]

What if you change your date range to be just today or yesterday? Looks like you have enough sessions in your date range that it's only showing 0.65% of actual data (sampled). If it only applies to recent data, your sampled data is going to be weighted towards the side of not having it.

I also just visited your site and I don't see the Better Analytics JavaScript code anywhere. Am I looking in the wrong place?

If you *disabled* it's JavaScript and are using your own it's not going to do dimension tracking unless the code you replaced it with is doing it.

 

[arn]

What if you change your date range to be just today or yesterday? Looks like you have enough sessions in your date range that it's only showing 0.65% of actual data (sampled). If it only applies to recent data, your sampled data is going to be weighted towards the side of not having it.

I also just visited your site and I don't see the Better Analytics JavaScript code anywhere. Am I looking in the wrong place?

If you *disabled* it's JavaScript and are using your own it's not going to do dimension tracking unless the code you replaced it with is doing it.

Ah I think that is it.

I have our Google analytics tags provided to us via Google Tag Manager. In order to avoid duplicate page tracking, I disabled the js in the Better Analytics. I had wrongly assumed that would just remove the actual GA tag, and not the rest of the tracking. Is it as simple as grabbing the rest of the code from Better Analytics and including it manually? Or is it dynamic per page, in which case I'll have to see about removing my google tag manager, and just using yours.

arn

 

[digitalpoint]

It does have some dynamic functionality... most notably in this case the stuff to do with the dimension tracking (since the dimension being recorded varies depending on the page you are on).

 

[Stuart Wright]

Since I installed 3.1.1 I'm getting this error server error every few minutes

Zend_Cache_Exception: Datas must be string or set automatic_serialization = true - library/Zend/Cache.php:209
Generated By: Unknown Account, 9 minutes ago
Stack Trace
#0 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/library/Zend/Cache/Core.php(360): Zend_Cache::throwException('Datas must be s...')
#1 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/library/DigitalPointBetterAnalytics/Model/Analytics.php(284): Zend_Cache_Core->save(false, 'analytics_realt...', Array, 3600)
#2 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/library/DigitalPointBetterAnalytics/CronEntry/Cron.php(15): DigitalPointBetterAnalytics_Model_Analytics->getRealtimeUsage()
#3 [internal function]: DigitalPointBetterAnalytics_CronEntry_Cron::runVeryOften(Array)
#4 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/library/XenForo/Model/Cron.php(357): call_user_func(Array, Array)
#5 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/library/XenForo/Deferred/Cron.php(24): XenForo_Model_Cron->runEntry(Array)
#6 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/library/XenForo/Model/Deferred.php(295): XenForo_Deferred_Cron->execute(Array, Array, 7.9773111343384, '')
#7 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/library/XenForo/Model/Deferred.php(429): XenForo_Model_Deferred->runDeferred(Array, 7.9773111343384, '', false)
#8 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/library/XenForo/Model/Deferred.php(374): XenForo_Model_Deferred->_runInternal(Array, NULL, '', false)
#9 /home/sites/avforums/public_html/deferred.php(23): XenForo_Model_Deferred->run(false)
#10 {main}
Request State
array(3) {
["url"] => string(37) "https://www.avforums.com/deferred.php"
["_GET"] => array(0) {
}
["_POST"] => array(4) {
["_xfRequestUri"] => string(106) "/threads/acrylic-platter-and-record-clamp-for-project-debut-carbon-also-added-project-phono-box-s.1981615/"
["_xfNoRedirect"] => string(1) "1"
["_xfToken"] => string(8) "********"
["_xfResponseType"] => string(4) "json"
}
}

Got 900 pages of server errors now.

 

[popr]

Does this have the ability to differentiate usergroups? Or at least registered members vs guests? That way, for example, we could see our adsense income from members vs non-members, or per usergroup.

 

[digitalpoint]

Does this have the ability to differentiate usergroups? Or at least registered members vs guests? That way, for example, we could see our adsense income from members vs non-members, or per usergroup.

Yep, if you use the User ID tracking stuff... guests won't have a user ID, so...

 

[digitalpoint]

Since I installed 3.1.1 I'm getting this error server error every few minutes

Got 900 pages of server errors now.

Do you have automatic serialization enabled in your XF config file?

 

[Stuart Wright]

Do you have automatic serialization enabled in your XF config file?

I hadn't and enabling it crashed the site. My host renamed the cache prefix and we're ok, now.
Thanks for coming back to me, Shawn.

 

[digitalpoint]

I hadn't and enabling it crashed the site. My host renamed the cache prefix and we're ok, now.
Thanks for coming back to me, Shawn.

Oh sorry, I should have mentioned that enabling it after the fact requires a cache flush.

But that being said, I'm going to go digging on what's going on there. I had *thought* I pre-serialized stuff so it didn't need to have the auto-serialization.

 

[popr]

Yep, if you use the User ID tracking stuff... guests won't have a user ID, so...

So how would one set this up in Analytics? I want to show results (lets say Pageviews) of guests. I tried EXCLUDING USERID with wildcard ".*" but all I got was an empty set. I haven't been able to figure it out so far with any filters or custom reports.

Thanks.

 

[popr]

Another quick question. How do we find and data within analytics encompassing "User Events To Track -> Content Being Created?" I don't see any such events in the reports. Once I get these 2 items figured out, I'm moving to the "pro" version.

 

[Stuart Wright]

@digitalpoint I think there is a bug with this addon.
If there is a quote character in the forum name, there is a javascript error.
For example
https://www.avforums.com/forums/samsung-owners-forum.145/
gives a js error

SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier
#1 https://www.avforums.com/forums/samsung-owners-forum.145:46:36

which is

<script>XenForo.node_name='Samsung Owners' Forum (145)';</script>

This appears to be being set in the template modification page_container_js_head
which adds

<xen:if is="{$forum.node_id} > 0"><script>XenForo.node_name='{xen:jsescape {xen:raw $forum.title}} ({$forum.node_id})';</script></xen:if>

before

<!--XenForo_Require:JS-->

I found this thread https://xenforo.com/community/threads/xen-jsescape-does-not-escape-some-characters.32705/
which explains how xen:jsescape doesn't escape single quotes.
So you need to change the template modification to be

<xen:if is="{$forum.node_id} > 0"><script>XenForo.node_name='{xen:jsescape {xen:raw $forum.title}, single} ({$forum.node_id})';</script></xen:if>

which I did and it fixed the problem.

 

[digitalpoint]

That's already in there... although it certainly could be a fix on my end that I never got around to pushing out in a new version (don't recall at this point).