This is about as quick and dirty as quick and dirty plugins get.

The most fun part of having a website is seeing where all the people that come to it come from. That’s why the DigitalPoint visitor mapping tool is so rad and sweet.

To keep you from obsessively checking your logs, I wrote a wordpress plugin that generates an rss feed of the last 25 referrals and where they ended up on your site. You could check mine by visiting http://www.biggnuts.com/referrals_rss.php, but oops I password protected it too. This way, you can just load up your rss referral feed in Sage or whatever you use and click the little deal to get up to the minute visitor info.

Here’s how to install.

DOWNLOAD REFERRAL FEED v 2.0

Then set the password inside the file before you upload it. The password is on line 24 and is blank by default.

$rf_password = “”;

You can leave it blank, but then if you have a link to your site in your signature file on like My Little Pony forums, someone will eventually find out. Change it to:

$rf_password = “yourpassword”;

Upload to your plugin directory.
Activate it.
Go to http://yoursite.com/referrals_rss.php?pass=yourpassword

Dibbity doo.

(If I misspelled referer or referral anywhere, please do not tell me)

UPDATE v2.0

Storing the whole deal in the database now. Now you don’t have to change a bunch of permissions and shit. Just upload and go.

UPDATE v1.2

I added some nicer formatting for searches that come from Google. Also, I was afraid this thing might leak your password if you’re viewing the feed in some weird way (passing the password via a referral to a nosey site) but I don’t think it will. I can’t get it to do so anyway.

I’m back from SES baby! (That means the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose).

If you want to know how awesome it was, just check out that picture of me in my pimp suit right there; courtesey of Ronee Holmes who runs the flutterfetti.com confetti site which was Pimped by me and my crew. If you’re looking for cool confetti wands that shoot confetti everywhich way like fun explosions (or funigasms), go there and buy shitloads.

Here are some more highlights in order:

The Delta Gamma girls at the BoDog party who gave absolutely no fuck that I performed the marriage ceremony for their Delta Gamma president. I guess they’d never heard Gnarls Barkley before.

The guy who bought the same new watch as me. If he looks happy, it’s because his watch is fucking sweet (and time synchrosized with mine).

The Pimp My Site panel starring Guest Pinch Pimper Rob Snell who sells a book on Yahoo! stores that you should buy!

Meets and greets with The Shoester.

And of course the good city of San Jose, who doesn’t kick people off pianos in their hotels or restaurants no matter how drunk they are or how 1PM it is on a Thursday.  Still waiting for those pictures…AHEM!
San Jose: 1, New York: 0.