ckanext-googleanalytics/README.rst

A CKAN extension for doing things with Google Analytics:

* It puts the relevant tracking code in your templates for you
  (including tracking code for external resource download links)

* It provides a page showing top packages and resources

* It inserts download stats onto individual package pages

Installation
============

1. Install the extension as usual, e.g.

  ::

    $ pip install -e  hg+https://bitbucket.org/sebbacon/ckanext-googleanalytics#package=/ckanext-googleanalytics

2. Edit your development.ini (or similar) with:

  ::

      googleanalytics.id = UA-1010101-1
      googleanalytics.username = googleaccount@gmail.com
      googleanalytics.password = googlepassword
      googleanalytics.show_downloads = true
      # the following *must* match profile name in GA dashboard
      googleanalytics.profile_name = mydomain.com

  That last comment is worth emphasising.  Due to the strange
  relationship between tracking IDs and profiles, you need to get that
  right.  It's the relevant value in the "Name" column for the list of
  "Website Profiles" that you see when you click on an Analytics Account
  link in the Google Analytics homepage.  E.g. you'll need two clicks
  from the analytics home page to see the profile name.  Sometimes your
  profile name might have a trailing slash; you need to include that, 
  too, if so.

  Note also that your password will probably be readable by other
  people; so you may want to set up a new gmail account specifically
  for accessing your gmail profile.

  If ``show_downloads`` is set, a download count for resources will be
  displayed on individual package pages.
            
3. Wait a day or so for some stats to be recorded in Google

4. Import Google stats by running the following command from 
   ``src/ckanext-googleanalytics``::

	paster loadanalytics --config=../ckan/development.ini

   (Of course, pointing config at your specific site config)

5. Look at some stats within CKAN

  Once your GA account has gathered some data, you can see some basic
  information about the most popular packages at:
  http://mydomain.com/analytics/package/top

  By default the only data that is injected into the public-facing
  website is on the package page, where number of downloads are
  displayed next to each resource.

6. Consider putting the import command as a daily cron job, or
  remember to run it by hand!

Testing
=======

There are some very high-level functional tests that you can run using::

  (pyenv)~/pyenv/src/ckan$ nosetests --ckan ../ckanext-googleanalytics/tests/

(note -- that's run from the CKAN software root, not the extension root)

Future
======

This is a bare-bones, first release of the software.  There are
several directions it could take in the future.

Because we use Google Analytics for recording statistics, we can hook
into any of its features.  For example, as a measure of popularity, we
could record bounce rate, or new visits only; we could also display
which datasets are popular where, or highlight packages that have been
linked to from other locations.