Twitter Analytics Screenshot, via Mashable

The service will likely help bloggers and anyone using Twitter to better gauge which of their tweets are the most successful and influential. You will also be able to determine which tweets caused users to follow (or unfollow).

While this service will likely provide additional insight into your Twitter account, it might be a little too late. There are several other services and options for viewing when you gain/lose followers, and methods of tracking tweets. However, this service will likely be more reliable – at least from the “analytics” standpoint.

What do you think about Twitter Analytics – will you use it when released?

Now, the plugin isn’t suitable for everything. For example, if someone deletes their tweet (either being controversial or for any other reason), you may be left with a display that isn’t formatted properly, as there is a slight delay before the tweet is properly displayed on your site.

Nonetheless, the plugin/integrated solution is a good solution for integrating tweets into your site. However, it would have been nice if something like this was available a long time ago, at least as clean as this version is.

TweetDeck recently announced several new changes, including plans to move to the browser – at least as an alternative to using it as a mobile or desktop app. The main reason for moving in this direction is for development. Currently, they are building a different version for the various app stores, and this results in some inconsistencies across them.

The HTML5 version is not expected for several more months, as they are focused on delivering a product that includes all the features currently available in the desktop version. When the web-based version is available, there will certainly be more integration with the TweetDeck accounts – you’ll likely need to sign in to access all the columns, saved searches, Twitter accounts, and more.

Update: A number of new services will also be included, such as geotagging support for users of Google Buzz and Foursquare.

The previous algorithm allowed some trends to be displayed for days, if not weeks on end, which really made the feature less useful for seeing what is really popular. On Friday, Twitter confirmed that a new method of ranking the topics was integrated, stating that it will also not “block” any topics from trending, but the “old” popular topics will be removed.

I am already noticing that more new topics are being added to the “Top Trending Topics” sidebar list. I suspect that new methods of discovering the top trends will become available directly on Twitter in the future, some of which will be aimed at corporate/business users and advertisers.

On one of my other blogs, I had one of these plugins running, but I noticed a lot of comments that were completely irrelevant to the post being let through. I had enough of the spam, so I installed the reCAPTCHA plugin (the company was recently acquired by Google, so the process of using it is now done through your Google Account).

The project also works to digitize the text of books (with thirty million captchas solved every day) by having Web users read or interpret the text.

Now, while the plugin eliminates spam, it may also detract some users from leaving comments. This is an issue that must be accepted, especially if you find yourself spending more time deleting spam than replying to legitimate comments.

Setting Up the Plugin

For WordPress users, search for the WP-reCAPTCHA Plugin in the WordPress directory and either download and upload it or use the automated process. Next, activate the plugin, head on over to the My Account Page (you’ll need to sign in using your Google Account), then get the keys for your blog. A number of options are available from the plugin’s page to help you better integrate the plugin into your blog.

A number of other platforms are also supported, including Drupal, Movable Type, phpBB, MediaWiki, Joomla, NucleusCMS, as well as several others. At this time, it doesn’t appear as though Blogger is supported, but I typically don’t see as much spam passing through their built-in filter, anyway.

As a Last-Resort Effort

This plugin is great to help you eliminate spam. Entering the words through reCAPTCHA is typically less painful than some of the other forms of spam prevention, and it’ll eliminate the need to go through hundreds of spam comments.

There are a number of other great plugins available for preventing spam, but I have found this one – in combination with Akismet to catch a majority of the spam/unrelated comments. As a last-resort effort, you can turn off comments on posts that are beyond a certain time period.

I last covered a large variety of these analytics services nearly two years ago, but some of these services have evolved since then, and I feel it is time to look at some of them again.

What Many of These Services Excel At

• Dedicated support, as many of these companies rely on new customers as their main source of income.
• Cleaner interfaces that make viewing stats easier.
• More tools, such as heatmap and mouse click tracking.
• Real-time stats for sites that are being hit with lots of traffic.

Keep in mind that there are other great services out there that may come close to Google Analytics, but these are some of the more unique services that excel in particular areas.

1. Woopra

Now used on more than a hundred thousand websites, one of the main features of Woopra is the revolutionary server architecture, allowing you to instantly see which pages are being hit the hardest, as well as being able to manage multiple blogs and websites. I can’t forget the live chat feature, which provides a “click-to-chat” feature to communicate with your visitors.

2. Mint

Mint breaks down visits, referrers, searches, pages, feed subscriptions, user agents, and more down into easily-digestible charts and graphs to help you better understand what is happening on your site and how people are interacting. Plans are $30 per site.

3. LiveStats

LiveStats provides (for a fee: $5.99 to $49.99 per month) a service with a clean interface and the ability to share how many visitors are on your site with your fans. It hasn’t been built to replace Google Analytics, but to provide an interface for quickly viewing all your stats.

4. Clicky

Clicky is positioning itself against Google Analytics, Woopra, Charbeat, Piwik, StatCounter, and SiteMeter, by offering a clearer look at your stats, as well as a dedicated mobile version, as well as several unique tools such as search keyword rankings, visitor hostnames, outbound link tracking, and more. Plans range from free to “Custom,” each depending on the features you want and how many visitors your site receives monthly.

5. Reinvigorate

Currently in beta, Reinvigorate aims to provide a look at your influence on the web in real-time. You’ll be able to track your stats from your desktop, view heat maps, and quickly dig in and discover all the relevant metrics about your site. The site is a Media Temple Venture Company.

6. W3Counter

Another service that is quickly growing, the site offers the ability to quickly view stats that really matter – view people currently online, view a live visitor map, learn what sites started linking to you today, and discover what new search phrases are bringing you traffic.

7. Piwik

What separates Pwik from other competing services is that it is completely free and open-source, which means developers will be able to build their own plugins for the system and you won’t have to store data with Google or any other service. The interface may not be as clean as some of the other services, but it includes a lot of the common features.

8. ChartBeat

ChartBeat is being used by a number of high-profile websites, and it can help you understand visitor engagement and provide analytics in real-time. One of the draw-backs is the pricing: all plans start at $9.99 and go up to $99.95/month, depending on the number of sites and how many visitors are concurrently on your site (1,000 for the Standard Plan).

9. Quantcast

Quantcast is aimed at much larger sites, but now they have global and local audience insights built into their tools. The service should be more accurate than Compete and Alexa, as it uses an embed code.

10. ClickTale

ClickTale certainly isn’t for all sites. They have more than 40,000 customers, but if you receive more than 400 pageviews/month (nearly all sites), then you’ll need to fork over $99/month (and that’s only up to 20,000 pageviews). However, a lot of tools including real-time monitoring, campaign tracking, page reports, and mouse move heatmaps have been built into the service.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is used on many of the most popular websites, as it offers a set of tools that were once part of a much more comprehensive web analytics suite Google Purchased—later released into their own branded version. However, there are many free (and sometimes paid) alternatives that offer competing services with much cleaner interfaces and other features.

The service has been launched by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, which also provides resources to the open-source WordPress.org service. Other “plugins” or services such as blogVault also provide reasonably-priced services for backing-up a blog, but might not be as feature-packed as VaultPress when it is officially released.

On the VaultPress Blog, you’ll find interesting facts Matt Mullenweg posted about the service, which set it apart from other services out there:

• It can handle any amount of stuff – whether you have just 50MB of content or 33GB.
• It’s an all-in-one package, meaning you won’t have to seek out different plugins or options for backing up your database, your files, your themes, and so on.
• You can make a post and it’ll be backed up within just a few seconds.
• Your information is stored on no less than two cloud services in addition to their own copies.
• Security vulnerabilities will be able to be “hotfixed” quickly, even more quickly than manually updating your site.

Obviously, the service won’t be ideal for people who only have one blog that they publish to a few times a year and it doesn’t generate them a profit. It has been built from the ground up to service as a solution for preventing data from being destroyed in the event of a security breach or any other problem you may encounter while blogging.

Other main points of the service:

• VaultPress protects more than just your content. It is able to understand the complete WordPress environment, meaning everything from your plugins to the dashboard, themes, and even your revisions are all backed up and ready to be restored.
• Real-time, continuous monitoring provides you confidence that everything you are doing is being protected at the same time.
• The system VaultPress uses is backed by WordPress Experts who maintain the WordPress.com website.
• The service provides an elite level of service.
• The service is easy to install on your site – sign up, then install one plugin. You’ll be able to add additional blogs at any time.

What do you think of this new service – being priced at $30 a month? Personally, I feel that it is a great value (although priced higher than many hosting services), but I’d like to see how it develops after a more final version is released.

A private beta is available, so if you are interested in the service, I encourage you to check it out.

What may separate the service from other similar services is that the site will display a number of tips to help you improve your search engine ranking, on-site SEO, as well as the usability of your website.

It combines traffic information from Google Ad Planner, Google Trends, and Alexa, with figures that aren’t accurate (to say the least). Like many of the other tools like this, you might want to revert to the tracking methods already implemented on your site like Google Analytics or similar services.

Check out the tool and let me know what you think of it – how does your site rank?

In order to use the theme, all you’ll need to do is provide your email address to the designers. Some may hesitate to do this, but you’ll need to provide it in order to get access to the theme – it is sent to you through your email address provided, and any new updates/new themes will be provided through the theme. It’s completely free, so this is a small cost to begin using the theme.

Out of the box, it works great for anyone using WordPress. Simply upload it to your server, and configure the basic settings of the theme. Of course, the theme is free, so it isn’t meant to be completely customizable from the back-end. You’ll need to edit the CSS for any major changes. The designers/developers of the theme are open to suggestions through their forum or contact page if you need any customizations done to the theme. You shouldn’t have much of a problem customizing the theme, as the theme was professionally coded and is optimized, resulting in a fast-loading site.

Four Styles and Formats

Often, the problem with free themes is the fact that there aren’t other variations, so you’re left using the one or two styles included, which might not suit your personal tastes. However, with this theme, four variations are included, but each maintains the simple and clean look throughout.

The black variation, shown above, as nearly a direct inversion of the white style, offering a dark look ideal for showcasing photographs and other types of content. I’m not as big of a fan of the dark look for blogs, as many readers will find it harder to read long lengths of text.

A two-column area has been setup for the main template, which functions more as a magazine template the way the featured content is displayed at the top than anything else. However, this blog template can be installed as a separate installation, and this is how I am using it on the other site. It makes a great solution, putting the content at the forefront of the site.

As shown above, both the main look (with a large featured image and link to the latest post) and the two-column blog template are available in both white and black color schemes.

Elements of the Theme

Even if a theme has a good structure, it also needs to have good typography. Because this theme was created for the designer and developer in mind, the typography is already great right out of the box.

Below, a screenshot of the typography shows the typography style of the theme. All bullets, headings, and quotes are styled, so you won’t have to customize the CSS in any way. However, my one minor complaint about the typography is that there’s no differentiation between the heading styles/sizes (H3, H4, etc.). It might only take a minute or two to customize them, but is necessary nonetheless, in promoting readable and structured content.

Next, we move onto the footer of the theme, where there is a unique four-column widget-ready area. If you don’t have any content in this area, the footer simply won’t expand, which is ideal, as you can produce an even simpler theme without any customization. The “complete” theme, with the left and right sidebars may be more ideal for users who want to use the theme much like a magazine, as it includes more widget-ready areas for advertisements and links.

The styling of comments is also a big part of all blogs, so the area for leaving comments and replying to comments must be well-designed. In the case of this theme, the perfect amount of spacing is provided, along with separation, between the content and the comments. Gravatars and threaded/reply functionality has also been integrated.

Conclusion

You’ve likely noticed that I like to change the theme of Blog Tipz quite frequently, although in this case, I’ll hold off on it. My current theme is doing the job well at this point (there are some things I don’t necessarily like about after testing and using the Structure Theme, but won’t be changing it for some time.

The main features I find appealing in the Structure Theme is the layout of content and the ability to change the styles, as well as the integrated full-width, blog pages, and archives/sitemap pages. These make it easy to get your site up and running quickly without making a huge amount of code edits.

Personally, this theme compares well to other premium themes aiming to be simple, but well-designed. Take the theme for a demo or let me know what you think of the theme. I am passing it on as I don’t think it’s received the exposure it deserves.

Before I look at the features, it might also be worth looking at where the service stems from. There are many services only that provide these bookmarklets – links you drag to your bookmarks bar to shorten links, share links, or get information about websites. When each has a specific function, it can dramatically clutter an area that you want to keep as clean as possible, defeating their purpose. Shortwave is a similar service, but doesn’t contain nearly the same level of functionality out-of-the-box.

As you can see in the screenshot above, even the website where you can find the bookmarklet is extremely simple to navigate and use. While the service is meant for everyone, it is intended for serious Internet users who need to quickly access a large number of “command line” functions. It won’t slow down your browser like other plugins/extensions, and has been made to be easy to use. For more experienced users, it can even be expanded to include more functions/shortcuts.

Below I’ve listed some of the common commands that can be used (many great for bloggers).

• codex – Search the WordPress codex.
• plugin – WordPress plugin search.
• wp – WordPress function search.
• archive – Check archive.org for the current page.
• gdb – Search Google Blogsearch for links to the current domain.
• bitly – Shorten current page with Bit.ly.
• evernote – Clip current page with Evernote.
• db – Bookmark the current page in Delicious.
• tn – Tweet the current page.
• s – Twitter search.
• t – Twitter user.
• tumblr – Share on Tumblr.
• post – Share on Posterous.

Check out the service, and let me know how it has come in handy (or what you may be using it for). Again, you can find the bookmarklet at quixapp.com.