Honest Analytics

Every screen, and what it tells you

Honest Analytics runs inside the WordPress admin, so all of this sits behind the login you already use. Nothing here reports on an individual person: every figure is an aggregate, and unique visitors are daily estimates.

23 REPORTS
Dashboard Real-time Pages Page detail Comparing pages Sources Content Devices Privacy Import your history Settings Campaigns Locations Events Goals Funnels Crawlers Scheduled reports Licence Dashboard widgets Views in the post list The editor panel Longer ranges

The screenshots below are placeholders. Each names the source file it will be cropped from.

IN THE FREE EDITION

The everyday reports

All of this is in Lite, on WordPress.org, with no key and no activation tracking. A privacy-first analytics plugin that will not tell you your top pages without payment is not a privacy-first analytics plugin.

Dashboard

LITE

How did the site do this month?

The overview screen, and the one you will keep open. Everything worth knowing about a period sits on a single page, so you are not clicking between six reports to answer one question.

  • A KPI strip with the change against the previous period
  • Traffic chart you can widen to any range you like
  • Hour-by-day heatmap: which days and times your site is actually busiest
  • Top pages, channels, devices and post types side by side
DASHBOARD KPI strip, traffic chart, heatmap, top pages, channels, devices and post types 01-dashboard.png

Real-time

LITE

Is anyone reading the thing I just published?

Who is on the site right now. Genuinely useful in the ten minutes after you publish, and honest about being a live window rather than a history you can go back to.

  • Active sessions, refreshed every fifteen seconds
  • Announced through a polite live region, so screen readers are not interrupted
  • No cookie and no identifier beyond the daily one
REAL-TIME Active sessions, with a polite live region and 15-second polling 02-realtime.png

Pages

LITE

Which pages are actually being read?

A ranked table of everything on the site, filtered however you need it. This is the report most people open second, and the one that quietly changes what you write next.

  • Ranked by views, uniques, or whichever column you sort on
  • Filters for post type, path and date range
  • Tick two or more rows to compare them directly
PAGES Ranked table with filters and comparison checkboxes 03-pages.png

Page detail

LITE

Why did this one take off?

One page on its own, with its trend and its arrivals. The screen you open when something unexpectedly does well and you want to know who sent them.

  • A single page's KPIs over the period
  • How it has trended, not just where it landed
  • The channels and referrers that brought people to it
PAGE DETAIL A single page's KPIs, its trend, and how visitors arrived at it 04-page-detail.png

Comparing pages

LITE

Is the rewrite doing better than the original?

Tick any two or more rows on the Pages screen and they line up against each other.

  • The comparison is a real URL, so you can bookmark it
  • Send it to a client without explaining which boxes to tick
COMPARING PAGES Two or more pages side by side, at a bookmarkable URL 20-pages-compare.png

Sources

LITE

Where did they come from?

Your channel mix, and how it has shifted. Referring hostnames only: the full URL is never written down, so a query string carrying a token never reaches disk.

  • Channel mix plotted over time, not just a snapshot
  • Referring hostnames, ranked
  • Search, social, direct and referral separated properly
SOURCES Channel mix over time, channels, and referring hosts 05-sources.png

Content

LITE

Which of us writes the things people read?

Performance grouped by the structures WordPress already has, rather than by URL. Useful the moment more than one person is writing.

  • By post type, including custom ones
  • A separate tab for taxonomies: categories, tags, anything registered
  • A separate tab for authors
CONTENT By post type, plus taxonomy and author tabs 07-content.png

Devices

LITE

Should I care about mobile on this site?

Device categories, browsers and operating systems. Categories rather than strings: the user-agent is parsed into a family and then thrown away.

  • Desktop, mobile and tablet split
  • Browser and operating system families
  • No full user-agent string is ever stored
DEVICES Device doughnut, browsers, and operating systems 08-devices.png

Privacy

LITE

What am I actually storing about people?

A screen almost no other analytics plugin has. It lays out exactly what is kept, what is not, and what your position looks like, in language you could hand to a client.

  • Stored and never-stored, side by side
  • What the identifier is and how long it survives
  • Lawful basis and how to answer a subject access request
  • States what the configuration permits, and says plainly that the compliance conclusion is yours
PRIVACY Posture card, stored and not-stored, identifiers, lawful basis, subject access 14-privacy.png

Import your history

LITE

Do I have to start from zero?

No. If you have been measuring with something else, bring the history with you. This is in the free edition, so switching costs you nothing but the time.

  • WP Statistics, Independent Analytics and Google Analytics 4
  • Whole days are replaced rather than appended, so running an import twice is safe
  • Straight about why the totals will not match your old tool exactly
IMPORT YOUR HISTORY Importing from WP Statistics, Independent Analytics or Google Analytics 4 17-import.png

Settings

LITE

What actually happens if I change this?

Every option with its consequence written next to it, rather than a wall of switches you have to read the documentation to understand.

  • The privacy-preserving choice is the default in every group
  • Anything set in wp-config.php shows as locked, and says so
  • Safe to leave entirely alone
SETTINGS Every settings group, each with its consequence spelled out 15-settings.png
IN PRO AND AGENCY

The reports that need more context

These read the same tables Lite has been writing to, so everything you have already collected appears the moment you upgrade. Nothing is migrated and nothing is re-keyed.

Campaigns

PRO

Did the newsletter or the conference talk do the work?

UTM-tagged traffic broken out properly and sat alongside everything else, so a campaign is comparable with your ordinary traffic rather than stranded in its own report.

  • Source, medium and campaign name, from utm_ tags and ad click IDs
  • Last non-direct click, first click or linear attribution, your choice
  • Plotted over time, so you can see a campaign decay
CAMPAIGNS Campaign performance by source, medium and name 06-campaigns.png

Locations

PRO

Where in the world are they?

Country-level reporting, from a geo database you install yourself and which is read locally. Nothing is looked up over the network and no address survives the lookup.

  • GeoLite2 or DB-IP Lite, installed with one WP-CLI command
  • Country level only, deliberately
  • No third-party lookup service, ever
LOCATIONS Country-level breakdown from a locally installed geo database 09-locations.png

Events

PRO

Is anyone clicking the thing I care about?

Custom events for the handful of interactions that actually matter on your site, without turning the whole page into a tracking surface.

  • Outbound clicks, file downloads, and how far down the page people read
  • Form submissions from Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, WPForms and Ninja Forms
  • Completed WooCommerce orders, with refunds netted off rather than deleted
  • Events ride the pageview beacon rather than adding requests of their own
EVENTS Recorded events with their counts and trends 10-events.png

Goals

PRO

How often does a visit turn into something?

Promote an event or a page to a goal and you get a rate rather than a raw number, which is usually the figure you were trying to work out in your head anyway.

  • Built from any event or any page
  • Conversion rate against sessions, not a bare count
GOALS Goal list with conversion rates, and the goal editor 11-goals.png

Funnels

PRO

Where do people give up?

Drop-off across a sequence of steps you define. Built to work inside the 24-hour identity window, so it stays honest about what it can and cannot see.

  • Step-by-step completion and drop-off
  • Works within the daily identity window by default
  • Anything longer-lived is opt-in and says so before you enable it
FUNNELS Step-by-step drop-off through a defined funnel 12-funnels.png

Crawlers

PRO

How much of that traffic was even human?

Bot activity reported on its own screen and never folded into anything else, so every other number on the site is people. Worth a look once a month purely for the shock.

  • Detected crawlers ranked and trended
  • Never counted in pageviews, visitors or any other figure
CRAWLERS Crawler activity, kept separate from every other figure 13-crawlers.png

Scheduled reports

PRO

Can it just tell me, without me going and looking?

A weekly or monthly summary by email, to whoever needs it. Keyed on the period rather than on the schedule, so a run that fires late still sends the right week rather than skipping it.

  • Page views, visitors and visits, each against the previous period
  • Plain text, so it renders the same everywhere and nothing tracks the open
  • Goes to whichever addresses you list, not just the site administrator
SCHEDULED REPORTS The weekly summary email, as it arrives 25-scheduled-report.png

Licence

PRO

What am I entitled to, and until when?

One screen in WordPress: your key, what it covers, and how many sites you are using against it. Managing activations and reaching your invoices happens in your account, not here.

  • Key field, activation status and site count
  • When updates and support run to
  • Fails open: a provider outage never disables a thing
LICENCE Key field, activation status, site count, and renewal date 16-licence.png
ELSEWHERE IN WORDPRESS

Where else it turns up

The reports are not only in one menu. They appear where you are already working, and all of this is in the free edition.

Dashboard widgets

LITE

Can the client see it without learning a new menu?

An overview and a "right now" widget on the main WordPress dashboard, for everyone who will never open the analytics menu on purpose.

  • Overview widget with the period summary
  • Right now widget for live activity
DASHBOARD WIDGETS Overview and Right now, on the WordPress dashboard 22-dashboard-widgets.png

Views in the post list

LITE

Which of these posts is worth updating?

A views column on the posts list, so the numbers are already there while you are deciding what to work on.

  • Sortable, alongside your existing columns
VIEWS IN THE POST LIST A views column alongside your posts 23-posts-column.png

The editor panel

LITE

How has this post done?

The figures for the post you are editing, in the sidebar, while you edit it.

  • Views and trend for this post
  • No context switch to check
THE EDITOR PANEL The analytics panel in the post editor sidebar 24-post-editor.png

Longer ranges

LITE

How far back can I look?

As far as your retention setting allows. There is no artificial cap on the date range, in either edition.

  • Ninety days, a year, or whatever you have kept
  • No date-range limit in the free edition
LONGER RANGES The dashboard over a ninety-day range 21-dashboard-90d.png

Try the Lite version. If you need the Pro reports later, your existing data comes with you.

Read the installation notes Install from WordPress.org Support the plugin