New! Improved! Escher Stats!
Imagine that you had a house (this may not be imaginary, if you live outside of Vancouver). You’re renting, and Matt the landlord is generally pretty awesome. Sometimes he comes in and says he’s going to work on some stuff, but he is always clean and fast and tidies up after himself and these things he’s working on are almost always improvements so that you’re the envy of the neighborhood and Bert and Lisa next door are always struggling to kludge together something that will do what your newest addition does naturally. It’s pretty sweet, particularly considering the rent is free, but you know the place doesn’t really belong to you, so when Matt decides to do some renos, you pretty much have to put up with it, but as we said, they generally work out pretty well.
A couple of days ago, Matt comes in and he says, “So, we’re going to be doing some work on your place. Don’t worry, it won’t interfere with the way you use the house right now, but when it’s launched, it’ll be a HUGE improvement!” Well, that sounds good, don’t it?
Sure do!
So what’s this great change Matt has in store for you?
“We know how important the bedroom is to you. It’s important to ALL our tenants. We see this. We respect this. So we’re going to make it even better! We’re going to wall up the door from the bedroom to the hallway BUT GET THIS, we’re going to make a special access tunnel just for each of you from our corporate headquarters straight into your own bedroom! Isn’t that awesome?”
No, it is not awesome, you say.
“But it has a moving sidewalk! And it goes straight through our corporate headquarters. In fact, we’re kinda hoping you’ll keep the door to the access tunnel open all the time, just because you enjoy it so much.”
With the WordPress.com front page evolving into a one-stop shop for posting, exploring, following and reading blogs, it seemed natural to put your blog stats there, too. Stats are becoming more and more about interacting with your readers and other bloggers.
You’ll still see your summary stats and chart on your main dashboard, and the full stats page in your dashboard will remain for a while, but the My Stats tab on the WordPress.com front page will soon become the home for the most comprehensive view of your stats. Stats will also continue to be available by clicking on the sparkline in the admin bar at the top.
No, my friends, this is not awesome.
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when it used to be just one? That seems less simple… aka, wrong direction. But maybe I’m misunderstanding?
Andy Skelton
January 26th, 2012 at 4:59 pmThe stats will still be just a click away from wp-admin. Our hope is that you find the homepage useful enough that you’ll want to keep it open in its own tab.
No. Just, no.
I might as well admit I have no idea why WordPress.com is doing this, but can only assume it’s to give WordPress.com itself, the URL, some fearsome googlejuice. Maybe it reduces the load on the servers.
Maybe this is almost as good as when they took away the New Post button. God knows, we don’t want those foofy “blogging” functions cluttering up your nice, clean dashboard which you are apparently supposed to use to keep track of your comments and pretty much nothing else.
raincoaster media 
max
January 31, 2012
The first really bad move WordPress mad re stats was when they decided, just as readers were becoming a thing, to take readers out of the stats. Now this. Ugh. They say they’re clouding stats and pulling load off the servers doing that, but that too is kind of a questionable move when clouds are under attack legally from all comers — and, still doesn’t make it necessary to force users to go to the WordPress home page to see stats. Bad move. Bad bad move.
Mihir Nayak, Owner of the Mitaroy Goa Hotel
January 31, 2012
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! That is exactly what I believe too.
Instead of toying around with the location of the Stats, Matt and his team should have thought of increasing the amount of data instead (e.g. time people spend on each post/page, location of the readers, country etc).
Rent free or not, sometimes it is just time to say No, Matt, No!
Cheers
Mihir
Team Oyeniyi
January 31, 2012
Wait until the Comments get moved too. *sigh*
I am seriously with you on this one, Raincoaster. I DO NOT like the “new and improved” version of the stats page.
So far I can still access the NORMAL, NICE one, but I’m wondering when it is going to disappear!
Ryan Hellyer
January 31, 2012
Wild stab in the dark guess … might be totally wrong ….
This perhaps has nothing to do with WordPress.com blog users at all, but may be a ploy to get self-hosted WordPress.com stats users off of their own installs, and onto the WordPress.com dashboard.
Like I say though, this assumption is based on nothing more than a wild guess on my part. I could be wildly off track.
raincoaster
January 31, 2012
Oh god, moving the comments too; I hadn’t thought of that. But it’ll probably happen.
Ryan, you might be right at that. That’s an interesting thought; but why not just make it for Jetpack users then, instead of all of us???
Couldn’t agree more, Max and Mihir. I don’t CARE what it does for WP; it along with removing the New Post button effectively divorce the bloggers from the process of blogging. I originally called this “I Got Divorced” in fact.
timethief
February 1, 2012
I rarely ever visit the WordPress.com front page. I’m not pleased with this change or with any changes that drive me to that page.
raincoaster
February 1, 2012
You are not alone. Wait till the Add New Post button is only available from the WP.com page too. God forbid we let people blog conveniently right from their dashboards.
Mayfielder
February 2, 2012
After the last big cock up which changed the way Galleries presented user’s photos I moved my main site to self hosting and have not regretted it. You get to use all those wonderful plugins too. This is absolutely no way to run such an important organization.
raincoaster
February 2, 2012
I have an independently hosted site and I don’t enjoy it. I prefer it here, but I’m about one more bad change away from moving. If they put the New Post button on the WordPress.com page, I’m outtahere.
timethief
February 17, 2012
[exreme sarcasm] Oh what spoil sports we are but stupid we aren’t. We don’t support ending up bloody well blogging on the front page of WordPress.com. Well, that’s the plan isn’t it? Move everything off our dashboards to the WordPress.com home page so WordPress.com page view stats shoot up by millions thereby increasing the advertising revenues – Ta Da! [/sarcasm]
raincoaster
February 18, 2012
I feel hyppocritical but YAY.
Jennifer Avventura
February 18, 2012
Thanks for this great post! Im also NOT a fan of the new crappy Stats Page. I still access it the OLD and BETTER way!
Reggie
February 18, 2012
I saw that ominous message (in red!) appearing on my blog this morning (“Starting soon, your stats page will be on the WordPress.com homepage only.”) and was severely peeved off, to say the least.
I want my stats to stay exactly where they are. I almost never go to the WP home page, and resent being forced to.
I’m alarmed to read speculation that the New Post button and Comment button may also move to the home page? Jeepers! Are you kidding?
But it’s evident from the long list of comments to the article (http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/your-stats-have-a-new-home/) that WP have already made up their mind. And equally evident that they don’t give a katootie about what we think either – given the silence from Matt et al.
I’m sure they must have a longer-term agenda, which is driving all these horrid changes that are being implemented, but it annoys me that they aren’t being upfront about it. Sneaky and underhand, one little change at a time, ignoring all our protests and pleas to the contrary, hoping we won’t notice the way they’re trying to fly under the radar… is this the new WordPress way?
I do not like this.
Val
February 18, 2012
Everytime WP.com changes something, my blood pressure rises. As I just posted to the forum, WordPress.com owns our souls, because it’s written into the TOS that we can’t even delete our accounts. I mean, wtf is that all about?
The stats on the home page are crap, but not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing for me is when they put the post editor there and remove it from the dashboard (which will happen, I’m sure) and when they screw up the dashboard to such an extent that even Eistein wouldn’t be able to find his way around (not even with via a ouija board).
How much more fucked up can they make things? Plenty. Why are they doing it? My thought is that they will probably end up doing one of two things: linking up somehow with Facebook, or selling the site to someone else.
More fool me, I know, but I used to blog on LiveJournal and I left when they sold out.
Jason Wingate
February 18, 2012
If they don’t change it back I’m leaving wordpress.
captnmike
February 18, 2012
I use the Read Blogs feature and moving the old Readomatic and Stats is just about Matt so he can say “My Page Views are Bigger than your page views” to the other internet companies. He also wants more people to check Freshly Pressed as you are forced to go to the home page.
And no I don’t think any amount of complaining by the unwashed masses that help make WordPress.com (remember we provide the content – no content no WordPress.com) possible will change much.
Nikola
February 18, 2012
This does seem quite bizarre… I don’t like to be manipulated in such a way. What might be a decent alternative to move to if I want to move away from WordPress.com?
Also, what’s the easiest way to export everything if I do move away?
Gabriel...
February 18, 2012
So WP decides it wants to promote the WordPress splashpage — for the hits or the lulz or whatever. So they move the stats / new post / editing functions / Global Tags to the splashpage. But what to do with all the other functions — links, widgets, etc — now that they’re orphaned on the dashboard? There’s still lots of room for more tabs, but don’t count out more clutter / drop-down menus in the (mostly empty) admin bar.
The dashboard is dead, long live the splashpage overlords.
raincoaster
February 18, 2012
The way they’re going, they will eventually remove that pesky “blogging” feature altogether.
Birdwhisperer
February 20, 2012
I haven’t even been paying attention to WordPress since they moved Blog Surfer to the WP home page. I just don’t get the point, it makes things HARDER FOR ME! WP is supposed to be easy to use, I had Stats and my subscribed blogs one click away from each other, and it was beautiful. Now I never check my subscriptions because it’s too much of a bother.
Now they’re moving the stats page too? Why? So we’ll be on their home page instead of our own dashboard? It’s pointless, it’s annoying. It makes me feel manipulated, and that makes me want to dig my heels in just out of spite. So ya know what WordPress? I don’t care. I’m not rewarding your stupidity with traffic to your main page. I don’t know what I’m going to do when they do make the change, but I’ll probably just end up forgetting about WP altogether. Urgh.
raincoaster
February 20, 2012
I said in the forum that blogging on WordPress.com will go down by thirty percent with their move of the new Post button to the WP.com page. Thirty to fifty percent, actually.
I know for now we can still post on our Dashboards, even though they took away the shiny big NEW POST button that was damn useful. They also took away the View Blog button.
Why? Why do these things? They already have substantially impacted the number of blog posts each active blogger makes. They will continue to do so to the point where, what the hell, why would anyone blog here?
What kind of company is Automattic anyway? I mean, what do they DO? Weren’t they once a company that made software that people could use to blog with? Now they increasingly appear to be a company that makes software that drives people to the wordpress.com page.
Jean
February 20, 2012
I enjoyed your blog post, raincoaster. It’s well written.
Methinks wordpress developers are forgetting that wp statistics is more of a back end adminstrative function for bloggers. It’s not part of a Wp news / freshly pressed, blog surfing “reading”.
If they understood that web metrics is not a piece of ordinary news but a tool to help us understand blog use patterns.
raincoaster
February 21, 2012
You’re quite right about it. Our stats are a tool for us to make our blogs better, to know how they’re doing. It’s not some general-interest piece of data.
However, other than the flack they’re getting, I can’t think of a reason compelling enough to WP.com itself to get them to move the stats back. But this, combined with writing posts from WP.com itself, makes blogging here far less emotionally involving, far less easy, far less likely to be actually DONE. I’d love to see stats for how many posts are made before and after each of these changes.
In fact, I’d LOVE to know how many posts were made before and after they took the New Post button off the admin bar. I bet the rate dropped like a stone.
tom
February 28, 2012
Thanks for this post, raincoaster. Since the announcement, I was wondering why they move the stats page. Now I know…