We would like to begin building a list of 100 brave souls to participate in our upcoming beta test. The testing will require volunteers to be accessible via email, a willingness to paste new or additional code on their site pages, and to provide detailed written feedback on results. We do not anticipate any adverse affects to your site and there is no risk to your current stats or data.

Volunteers must also be willing to sign an NDA and have daily traffic in excess of 100 visits.

If you would like to sign up as a Beta Tester please go to this link, provide us with your name, email address, current SiteMeter codename, and your website URL. We anticipate a large number of volunteers, and although we’d like to allow an unlimited number we must restrict it to 100. If you are not selected please know we appreciate your interest and willingness to help us work out the final kinks.

Sincerely,
The SiteMeter Team

As we move closer to the completion of the New SiteMeter website we want to be sure and give everyone ample time and opportunity to prepare.

As you know, if you currently have more than one SiteMeter account, in order for you to view the stats for these different accounts you have to log in and out of each account separately. When we move to the new platform you will have the opportunity to combine all your accounts into one “Master Account”. This means you will only have one login and only have to go to one area to view the stats for all your accounts.

In order for us to transition between the current platform and the new platform and enable this new feature you will be required to know the email address, codenames, and passwords for all your accounts.

We would like to suggest that you take a moment, especially if you have multiple accounts, to update all your email addresses, make them the same for all your accounts, write down your codenames, and passwords. We even suggest changing your passwords if you have multiple accounts, making them all the same. This will make your migration to the new platform much easier.

Your current email address can be found in the account “Manager” area under email address. Passwords can be changed in the same “Manager” area.

Sincerely,
The SiteMeter Team

Many of you may not be aware of this but SiteMeter currently has a feature called the IP ignore tool. This tool was originally created so that site owners could “tag” themselves so their visits to the site would not counted as visit traffic - or in other words, it ignored that visit.

In the new SiteMeter II platform we have improved on this tool.

The new Ignore Visits tool allows you to ignore up to five different IP addresses. Unlike the current SiteMeter ignore tool, which is cookie based and therefore limited to one computer, you can now enter IP addresses for more than one computer. So if you happen to check your site during the day from one computer, and in the evenings from a different computer you can enter the IP for both and they will be excluded (or ignored) in your visit stats.

The best part is we have included an IP lookup tool, so with just a click of the mouse we can tell you the IP for most any computer location, except maybe if you happen to be sitting in NORAD. Sorry NORAD bloggers.

We hope that our improvements to the overall site and the small details like this show our continued commitment to improving our product for you - our dedicated users and supporters.

The SiteMeter Team

We have spent a lot of time in recent newsletters talking about some of SiteMeter II’s more conspicuous new features. This month we want to address one of the less visible, but important new features – the change to our “Privacy” setting.

Currently, SiteMeter users have the option of changing the “Privacy” level of their SiteMeter icon which appears on pages containing our stats code. The default setting is “Normal” which essentially means that anyone who clicks on your SiteMeter icon will be taken to your SiteMeter stats page.

For some people the Normal setting is fine, but for others who have a desire to keep their site stats private they can change their privacy setting to Medium or High. Unfortunately, at the moment there is really no difference between Medium or High. Both deny access to your sites stats for anyone clicking on your SiteMeter icon and there is nothing in between.

When we launch SiteMeter II this we will be changing the Privacy options slightly, but the differences will be more apparent and important to note. There will still be three Privacy options - Low, Medium and High. The default “Low” setting will allow anyone to view all your stats pages and reports. A setting of Medium will allow users to just view your “Summary Page” report (see sample). Although they will be able to see there are other report pages, they will not be able to access them. And last but not least, a privacy setting of High will function just as it does now – directing people to www.SiteMeter.com and denying them access to your stats.

One final note – even if you have your privacy setting on Low or Medium, people who are viewing your stats will not be able to change any displayed reports or manipulate the date range settings, etc. Only the account owner who is logged in will be able to make changes or interact with the reports interface.

The SiteMeter Team

One of the many new features we’re very excited about in the upcoming release of SiteMeter II is the ability to aggregate stats. What this means is that if you have a number of sites, say for example 5 baseball, and 5 hockey related sites, you could group them together by topic. Once you have assigned them to a group you can view the stats for them as a whole. This would then allow you to compare how your hockey group is doing versus your baseball group. If you wanted you could also group by Geographic location, time zone, or business unit. The choice is entirely yours.

This new feature will be limited to Premium accounts only. We’re allowing a maximum of 5 groups to which you can assign one or all of your accounts.

Stay tuned for more information on this and other upcoming releases.

Sincerely,
The SiteMeter Team

Get SiteMeter Widget Here (Windows Version) or (Mac Version)

We’re excited to announce the release of our new SiteMeter widget.

This cool little device is technically a Yahoo widget which is placed on your PC desktop. Each day it will show you your sites traffic, updated every six minutes. With a simple mouse click on the widgets switch you can change from page views to visits. At midnight each night it resets and starts all over again. It also has some fun little custom options to change fonts and font colors etc. And if you want you can enable speech and the counter will tell you what your current traffic totals are each time it updates.

Installing Yahoo Widgets is required prior to installing our widget. After the SiteMeter widget (Windows Version) (Mac Version) has been downloaded, run the installer or extract the .zip file and save the file on your desktop. Click the SiteMeter icon on your desktop to add the widget to Yahoo widgets. Once you have installed this widget open the “preferences” (right click on the widget) and enter your sites SiteMeter codename.

From the SiteMeter widget preference menu you can change the following options -
- Codename. Enter your SiteMeter codename.
- Range Start and Range End. If your site receives 100 visits a day you can set the Start and End to 0 and 150. If you have more traffic you can make the End value higher. The choice is yours.
- Pulse Speed. This will adjust how quickly or slowly the “Pulse” indicator moves. The Pulse simply indicates that the SiteMeter widget is working.
- Speech Enabled. For those who prefer an audible notification a voice can be enabled which will tell you how many visits or page views your site has. The Voice will notify you every 6 minutes when the Widget checks your sites data.
- Add/Edit your Website Name. You can display your sites name on the widget and change the color and/or font of the displayed text. When you click on the website name you will be directed to the SiteMeter home page.

Please note that the SiteMeter Widget works only if you have your privacy settings at “Normal” or “Medium”. It will not work if you privacy is set to “High”. If your privacy level is set to “High” you will receive a password protected error.

Please also understand that we are not able to provide technical support for this device.

Enjoy!

The SiteMeter Team.

RSS, for those still new to the term, stands for Really Simple Syndication. Unfortunately not even the definition really explains what RSS means to the average blogger or site owner.

The shortest way to explain RSS is to think of it as an internet language that allows internet users to create custom pages which automatically pull headlines, articles, and stories from sites and blogs for viewing and reading without the internet users actually having to visit any of the sites.

Here is a more lengthy explanation.

Imagine for a second that you like to watch the news on TV. But if you are like most people you have preferences. Say for example you like the weather report on channel 7, the local news from channel 5, the national news on channel 8, and CNN financial news on channel 23. Now let’s say, rather than sitting through all the stuff you don’t like, jumping back and forth between channels, trying not to miss the stories that interest you – you are able to create your own custom channel. With your custom channel you are able to view only the weather from channel 7, the local headlines from channel 5, and the national and financial headlines broadcast.

Of course to make this happen all these channels must broadcast using one common signal and it must be a signal that your custom channel specifies and understands.

This is very similar to how RSS works.

RSS allows internet users to create a single location (using a subscription service) where they can view content from any number of websites and blogs that they specify without ever actually having to visit those sites. Of course to make this possible the sites of interest must be capable of “broadcasting” in RSS, which unlike television signals is actually an internet language.

The good news is that most blog platforms (Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, etc.) pages are already designed to “broadcast” the page content in an RSS signal format. So for most of you, your blogs are already capable of broadcasting your blog stories in RSS format across the World Wide Web.

But there is still the matter of the subscribers to your content.

The subscription services, also known as Feed Readers or Aggregators, as we’ve discussed, allow individuals to create a page and specify what content is shown.

Normally a Feed Reader only requires the individual setting up a Reader to supply the URL (e.g. www.blogtalk.com) of the site or page they want to subscribe. Once the URL is entered it will generate a list of the most current stories as they are released. The subscriber is typically shown a headline and the first sentence or two of the story. If they choose they can click on a specific story that interests them and read the full article or just delete it. If they click to read the full story they will typically be redirected to the site where the full story is posted.

There are currently hundreds of Feed Readers available to internet users. Some are more popular than others. Here are a few examples.

Often times you see blogs and sites with a whole list of these logos. These essentially allow internet users to subscribe to your content easily and quickly, provided you have listed the one they use.

For bloggers and sites with a steady flow of content releases this means that a large part of your audience may not actually be coming to your site. Never the less, these people are an important and valuable part of your total audience since they are viewing your content.

When we launch our new SiteMeter platform our plan is to offer you statistics about your RSS subscribers. We’ll be able to tell you things like how many people clicked on your subscription links and which links they clicked. We’ll also be able to tell you when subscribers are arriving to read your full stories, which reader they are arriving from and which story they are choosing to read.

Sincerely,
The SiteMeter Team