I am selling my WordPress plugins, and they all come with a lifetime updater feature. Most of my plugins, including Lighthouse and Active Analytics, are being updated on a monthly basis, and the update is pushed to all users.
Since I implemented the updater, last year, I wanted to know how many users are using my plugin and what version they have. So, I started recording pings to my updater API and storing some basic details, such as the WordPress version and the URL.
I have my own API endpoint for this, and I am storing everything in a MySQL database. I even have a nice chart – – that shows how many distinct websites are pinging the updater:
This is the Sparks font. It uses percentages, so numbers cannot go higher than 100. But it’s a good indicator for me to see how many new users I am getting daily. So far, the growth looks good. I assume whenever I release a new version, I get a spike.
There’s more to this Sparks font, and the design is interesting:
Bars
thin:
medium:
wide:
extra wide:
Dots
extra small: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
small: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
medium: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
large: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
Lines
extra thin: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
thin: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
medium: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
thick: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
extrathick: 123{30,60,90,60,100,50,45,20}456
I have also implemented the same updater for the company I’m working with, for 2 plugins and one theme. My personal ones are 3 plugins and one theme. So far, I’m happy with the result.
What can I do with it, though?
Obviously, marketing. Basically, I can contact the owners of the websites and upsell them plugin modules. I don’t have any, though, and contacting them might be against GDPR regulations. So, the only purpose my stats have right now is just that: statistics. Data. Information. Power!
Knowing that my plugins are being used by, say, 3000 websites is a nice thing. What else can I do with the data?
