Multisite Post Tracking by User

• 

  Posted by Rob Garfield on March 5, 2012 at 12:35 pm

  I’m trying to figure out the most convenient way to track posts by user across a Multisite WP install. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

• Scott Voth (he/him)

  Member

  March 5, 2012 at 6:54 pm

  Hi Rob – You might be interested in Alan Levine’s post – http://106tricks.net/2012/02/10/keeping-up-with-blogs/ about how he uses Google Reader and RSS bundles to keep track of DS106 posts. There is also a plugin available on the Commons called FeedWordPress that integrates (syndicates) posts from other sites into your blog stream. You could read about that here – http://codex.commons.gc.cuny.edu/feedwordpress/
  Rob Garfield

  Participant

  March 6, 2012 at 12:02 pm

  Hello Scott — Thanks for the quick response. I realize I was not clear in my original post. What I’m looking for is, minimally, a way to track the number of posts and comments that a user makes across a multisite installation.

  There is a plugin out there (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/participants-widget/) that tracks and displays the number of posts and comments made by a particular user in a particular blog. I’m asking about doing that for a blog network.

  I asked the question in the hope that there is something out there — does not have to a plugin — that does this already.

  Again, thanks for the quick response and sorry for the vagueness of my OP.
  Boone Gorges (he/him)

  Member

  March 6, 2012 at 2:34 pm

  This is hard to do: it’s hard to collect existing data, because each blog has its own set of database tables, and it’s hard to collect new data, because each blog runs its own set of plugins.

  The best way I know of to do this is using BuddyPress. With BP active networkwide, all blog posts and comments are tracked in the activity stream. See eg http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/activity/, where you can pick Show Blog Posts or Show Blog Comments from the filter dropdown. (On a normal BP installation, this is possible on user profiles too – see eg http://social.qwriting.org/members/bgorges – though it’s a bit hidden on the Commons at the moment.)
  Rob Garfield

  Participant

  March 6, 2012 at 6:41 pm

  Thanks, Boone. Do you know if anyone has written a parser for the BP activity stream that might extract important data per user, (e.g., as mentioned, # of posts, # of comments, pages created), that could make reporting easier? Is that crazy ambitious?

  Context:
  There is interest at QC in enriching the writing requirement with a “digital literacy” (for want of a better term) component by asking students to blog regularly. While the availability of the per user activity stream in BP is great for looking at the data on an individual by individual basis, the scale of this potential project would most likely make zoomed out data views a necessity.

  Thanks, again, Scott and Boone.
  Boone Gorges (he/him)

  Member

  March 6, 2012 at 10:05 pm

  I don’t know of a tool that does this. However, because all of the data is stored in the BP activity database table, it’s pretty easy to pull with a loop that does the necessary queries. If you only need it pulled up once, I can probably throw something simple together for you (while wearing my qwriting cap). No fancy UI or anything, but it will get you a bunch of data – and it could be shared so that others get benefit out of it too. Ping me over email if you want to talk about it.