Make It

How to Filter Your IP Address in Google Analytics

Filtering your IP address in Google Analytics means that any visits made to your site from your computer will not be tallied in the totals for any of the data collected, including site visits. Since the numbers won't be skewed by the many times a day you visit your own blog, this gives you a more accurate picture of your reader activity.

This is not the most straightforward process for those of us who aren't techies, so here's a simple tute.

Step 1: In Google Analytics, under Accounts, select the name of your blog.

 

Step 2: Select the link located In the bottom right, entitled "Filter Manager." Click on the image below to make it bigger and clearer.

 

Step 3: Select "Add Filter." See it on the right side of the box below?

Step 4: Enter "Filter Name." I just called it, "Visits from my computer." Select "Predefined Filter" and then "Exclude," "Traffic from the IP addresses," "That are equal to." And then enter your IP address in the fields below. How do you find out your IP address?

Step 5: What is my IP address? Visit http://ipchicken.com/ and your IP address will pop up right on the screen. It's incredibly easy. Type that number in the boxes. You do not need to type in any slashes or periods. Just the numbers.

 

Step 6: On the same page, under the section called "Apply fiter to website profiles" select your blog from the box on the left, called "Available website profiles," and hit the "Add" button to move it to the box on the right, called "Selected website profiles."

 

Step 7: Save Changes and you're done! You have now set up a filter so the Google Analytics will not count visits to your site made from your own computer.

How to Add Google Analytics to Your Typepad Blog

I recently decided to add Google Analytics to this blog for the first time and, even though I consider myself fairly Internet savvy, the process kind of mystified me.

In the end, it turned out to be not too difficult, but in case someone else is trying to find the same info, here's an illustrated guide to adding Google Analytics to your Typepad blog. This will be part 1 of 2. Tomorrow will deal with setting up a filter in your Google Analytics to ignore visits from your own IP address.

Step 1: Sign up for a Google Account. This is the easiest step because you already have a Gmail account anyway, right?

 

Step 2: http://www.google.com/analytics/

 

Step 3: See that pull down menu at the far left? Click it and select "Create New Account". Click on the image below to see a bigger, clearer version. (And pay no attention to the sad stats for my now-closed Etsy shop. But look at that! Visits for rifferaff.com are up 100%!)

 

Step 4: Click Sign Up. I think this is confusing (didn't I already sign up for a Google account?), but just click the button and let's keep it moving.

 

Step 5: OK, here's where you sign up your blog.  

 

Step 6: Last name. First name. Country.

 

Step 7: Does anyone actually read these things?

 

Step 8: This is what you will see next and here's where things deviate a little from what you're instructed on the screen. If you're only tracking a single domain (one site) leave the defaut selection on the left as is (if you're tracking more, I can't help you). Since this is a tutorial for adding Google Analytics to your Typepad site, you do not need to copy and paste the code. I repeat, you do not need to copy and paste the code. You do not need to email it to yourself. What do you do? Press "Save and Finish" and move along. Trust.

 

Step 9: You'll be taken to a site that looks like this. Copy the UA number, all of it, including the "UA." I've blocked out my UA number below, but on your own screen, it should appear where that little purple box is.

**Reminder: this is a tutorial for adding Google Analytics to your Typepad blog. For the purpose of taking screenshots for this tutorial, I went through the steps using the URL for a (janky) Blogspot blog I've set up for my writing, which is why you see a Blogspot address in the screenshot below. But these steps are not for adding GA to Blogger. They have their own tutorials over there specifically for that purpose. 

Step 10: Open a new tab, go to your Typepad Dashboard and select "Settings."

 

Step 11: Select Add-Ons from the menu on the left.

 

Step 12: Enter your UA number which you should copy from Google Analytics as seen in Step 9. Paste into the appropriate box. "Save Changes" and you're golden!

 

Step 13: Almost! See the yellow triangle icon in the status column? That means that your Google Analytics is not properly set up just yet. Give it about 24 hours for the code to all sync up or do whatever it is that it needs to do. Check back a day later and if it hasn't turned into a pretty little green check mark then you should ask a computer savvy friend for assistance because I have no idea what went wrong.

 

Congratulations! You have installed Google Analytics on your Typepad blog and can now start using it to see information about your visitors like how long they spend on your site and how they found your blog. One of the most exciting (or depressing) metrics that you can see will be how many visitors you have. If you have a smaller blog and are looking for an honest assesment of your visitors, you should consider blocking your own IP address so that visits logged from your own computer won't be counted in the visitor counts and site views.

Figuring out how to do this was a little more tricky than installing Google Analytics so I will post a separate tutorial tomorrow on how to block your own IP address in Google Analytics.

 

 

Jumpstart Your Blog in 2011

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to re-energize this blog and inject some new life in it. I originally started Make It to document the process of starting my own small creative business and the blog has seen me through every phase. From planning, launching, filling orders, getting press, sending out celebrity (spouse) orders, artist collaborations and, ultimately, closing, it's all been logged here. What up, Archives.

And even though I'm not as immersed in the world of small creative businesses as I used to be, I still enjoy blogging and having a place to share, commiserate and learn. So, all this week, I'm taking a few steps to re-energize the blog and I'll share them here, just in case someone else has got the same crazy idea.

First up, I want to take more ownership of my blog by learning more about my visitors. How many of there are you? WHERE DO YOU COME FROM? How did you find me? Google, as always, has the answers.

Coming up next: a tutorial on how to install Google Analytics on your Typepad blog.

Illustrator help: Making seamless pattern repeats

I spent most of this weekend working on starting to work on a portfolio of repeat patterns. These are patterns I wouldn't use for Rifferaff, but I would try to sell to agencies. It's fun to work in a different style and color palette than what I try to do with my own line. This whole world is very new to me, so new in fact that I need help on how to make a pattern! When I make patterns for silkscreening I know that my screen will be 18 x 24 so I just arrange the images on an 18 x 24 artboard in Illustrator and call it a day. When making patterns for sale, I have to make a repeating swatch that can be repeated infinitely and potentially be applied to products of any size. I know in theory how making a pattern repeat should work, but after much trial and error I just can't get my seams to line up. They're always off by a hair and it's making me crazy because when I tile the swatches there are always visible lines. Is there a magic step? Am I supposed to be using the grid and my math skills to measure? Or is there a special command in Illustrator for this purpose? Or does it just take lots of trial and error? Help in the comments section please!

Day 78 and 79

Day 78 & 79 - January 5, 6

This weekend I've been working on getting a decent website up. I have no training in web design (are you noticing a trend here) but through trial and error I've learned enough to put up something presentable.

I use NVu, which is an open source software (i.e. free) comparable to Dreamweaver.

Once I get my new screens and can take pics of new product, I'll update it. But I think, in the long run, I'd rather pass off this duty to a web designer. I don't really have the time or skill level to build the site the way I want it myself, so this is something I wouldn't mind passing off to a professional. In the meantime, here it is: www.rifferaff.com

Video Tutorials

Video tutorials on YouTube for Photoshop and GIMP show you visually how to use the programs. It's almost as good as taking a class. (via Etsy Labs blog)

An Alternative for Designing Your Website

Websitesnap.com is an online web builder that allows you to put together decent looking web pages for minimal cost. While I don't think services like this offer any threat to the livelihood of web designers, they offer a middle ground between hiring a professional to create your site and learning all the necessary coding to do it yourself.

The screenshots of other sites created using this service aren't half bad, so this could be a viable alternative. This is the first of these services that I've seen that offers a shopping cart feature that you can incorporate into your site, making it all that easier to add an e-commerce component.

Taschen: E-Commerce

Was browsing through Denyse Schmidt's book in the bookstore yesterday while my boyfriend was checking out design books the next row over when I found this in his aisle: Web Design: E-Commerce, by TASCHEN.

TASCHEN is an innovative and creative publishing house that publishes graphic-heavy books in all manner of subject matter. Their books are always very affordable.

They have a whole series of books regarding different aspects of web design; pictures dominate, text is minimal. The E-Commerce book is mostly comprised of pictures of beautifully constructed online retail sites. Most of the sites are probably too extensive and too expensive for most of us to recreate, but it's worth a look to check out different ways to construct and design online shop.

Free Word Processing Program for Macs

Speaking of MS Word, as a Mac user, I've never quite mastered AppleWorks, the Apple version of MS Word. I find it very confusing and not as easy to use as Word. Enter Open Office. Open Office is a free word processing program available for download at www.openoffice.org/. It's got all the familar aspects of MS Word that Apple Works is missing, like toolbars with info about fonts and text alignments. I find it just as user-friendly as MS Word, but it's free and Mac-compatible. It has made formatting documents much easier and I recommend it for Mac users who do word processing on their computers.

Etsy Version 2 Now Online

The new Etsy is now online. It's very different, I don't know how I feel about it. I think I need some more time to click around and explore the new features. I'm not crazy about the new design of the homepage, it seems like there's more text and fewer pics and graphics than there were before.

I am a huge Etsy fan, but a major issue I have with it is that it's kind of intimidating for people who aren't familiar with it. Navigating and purchasing items from Etsy is not as easy as going onto most other online shops to purchase something. There are just so many sellers and so many different categories to peruse. A point of concern I often see in the Etsy forums is whether the Etsy sellers are just selling to each other and not reaching non-crafty customers. I want the design and the interface of Etsy to be welcoming to non-crafters who are visiting for the first time. We'll have to wait and see if Version 2 accomplishes this.

The Etsy blog has great updates on the latest status of the Version 2 changes: http://blog.etsy.com/