Hello again Blog Engagers. Nate Balcom here with a new tip on how to beef up your WordPress dashboard with custom analytical widgets. Follow the quick tutorial below to get more out of the default WordPress dashboard panel.

It’s a simple process that I recently started adding to my client’s WordPress sites and it’s going over famously. It takes next to no time, but looks impressive and is a nice little addition when you eventually hand over the admin to the consumer.

(Click for larger image)

Why I Initially Did This

I recently added some flash affiliate ads to my website. While these are super slick looking they take longer to load than traditional image ads. So in an effort to decrease my page load one of the things I decided to do was remove my Whosamungus widget from my sidebar as this really was only for me. I really do love Whosamungus, but in an effort to keep readers on my page I decided it had to go in order to lighten the initial load.

One of the big SEO mistakes that often gets overlooked is website load time. If you’re site takes for ever to pop up on a screen you’ll notice your bounce rate increase. People have a short attention span and if your content is too heavy viewers will quickly hit their back button.

Who Is WhosAmungUs?

If you’re not familiar with Whosamungus here’s an example of their map widget in action. This is for my website.

Each star that pops up is a new visitor. Please feel free to open my website in a new window and see the real time stats in action. The widget will tell you how many people are on your website right now without having to load a new page. It also shows you where these people are on this planet and which page they are actually on. They also offer a pro version of WhosAmungUs for $5 a month which includes a lot more analytical data.

Sounds Great Why Did You Get Rid Of It?

Well first off I didn’t get rid of the widget. I’m a huge fan of WhosAmungUs and have been using their product for years now. I truly didn’t want to lose the fabulous real-time stats this provides so instead I added it to my WordPress dashboard. Now I can still utilize what WhosAmungUs offers and decrease my load time at once and all I had to do was install a simple plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Sold yet? Ok let’s get started…

First You’ll New To Install This Button

In order for the map to work on your dashboard you’ll have to have a button installed on your homepage. I figured this one out the hard way. When I was first toying around with my dashboard I realized I was the only one show up in the real time results. Apparently, the script needs to exist somewhere on the actual site so it know’s when visitors are accessing your content. Take your pick from their plugin showcase.

Next you’ll want to install the Dashboard Post-it. This plugin was actually created to post notes to authors on a blog, but it works perfectly for what I wanted to do so I went with it. With this plugin you can simply paste html or javascript into a defined panel on your WordPress dash. It can be configured and moved around as any other Dashboard widget.

Now you can simply edit this box and paste in your widget code. Done.

Adding Google Analytics To Your WordPress Dashboard

I also wanted to include a Google Analytics panel to my dash. There are a lot of options for this just take your pick. Google Analytics Dashboard was a good fit for what I wanted. “Google Analytics Dashboard gives you the ability to view your Google Analytics data in your WordPress dashboard. You can also allow other users to see the same dashboard information when they are logged in or embed parts of the data into posts or as part of your theme.”

Once the plugin is activated go to the, “Google Analytics Dashboard”, tab under settings and login to your Google Analytics account. Once logged in you can choose which accounts to follow. From here you can also choose what user type can view these reports. Admin, editors, authors, etc. You can even follow your goals from the same panel.