If you run any business, you need to know how your customers interact with your product, so that you can get feedback and improve your product. Similarly, if you run a blog or any kind of website or xenforo forum, it is extremely useful to get insight information about your visitors. How are they interacting with your forum, what are the key posts of your forum, so that you can improve them and make more posts like that?
This can be done by using Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a web software by Google itself that can be used to get insight information about your visitors.
Connect your Xenforo Forum with Google Analytics and get some useful information that can help you to improve your forum.
Below is the complete step-by-step guide to connecting your Xenforo Forum and Google Analytics without using any additional add-ons.
The Guide is divided into 2 parts –
- Getting your Tracking ID from Google Analytics.
- Entering your Tracking ID in Xenforo Forum.
If you already have your Measurement ID or Tracking ID, skip to Step 2.
1. Get your Tracking ID from Google Analytics
Let’s Start
- Go to Google Analytics, and log in with your desired account.
- Click on the button saying START MEASURING
3. Set up your Tracking account (Not Analytics Account). Give any name you want, it is just used to navigate if you have more than 1 site). Select other options if you want, they might help you. Click next when done.
4. Now next step is to set up your property account. Add any name you want. Select your reporting time zone and the currency you want. Click next when done.
5. Now provide some information about your blogs/forum. Select small – 1 to 10 employees if you have less than 10 authors on your site/forum. Click all the options below, this will give you a detailed insight into your Xenforo forum. These options will provide you with all the information about your visitors and their engagements with your forum.
Click Create when done.
5. Here’s the agreement screen. Select your country of residence. Check the box. Click I accept. (If you have enough time go ahead and read the agreement.)
6. Set up your Data Stream. Select Web. If a popup occurs saying My Email Communications. Select options and click save if you want to receive newsletters from Google Analytics. I usually click “untick all and save”.
7. Add your Site Url and Site Name and click Create Stream.
8. Click on your created stream.
9. Get your Measurement/Tracking ID. Copy this ID.
2. Insert your Tracking ID in Xenforo.
Now that you have got your tracking code, let’s insert it in your Xenforo Forum and start tracking your analytical data.
10. Head over to your Xenforo Admin Control Panel and select the very first option Setup and click on “Options”.
11. Go to Statistics and Metrics.
12. Enter your Measurement/Tracking Code here. Click save and you are done. You have successfully connected your Xenforo Forum with Google Analytics.
Now it’s time to check if the code is successfully inserted.
13. Right-click on your forum page and click on the view page source. It will show you all the codes of your website. Now search for your tracking id. Press ctrl+f to find and enter your tracking id.
If you find your Tracking ID, you have connected your Forum with Google Analytics.
Now that you have your forum ready, it’s time to earn from your work. You can use different Ad-networks to place ads on your forum, I personally recommend Adsense. Just connect xenforo with AdSense and place Google ads on your forum and start earning passive income. You can also start membership plans for the forum. Offer some special features to the members so they would like to purchase the membership.
