I tried to create a central FireStats install to collect statistics from multiple WordPress sites, but wound up giving up. I suspect part of my problem was not knowing what order to do things in.

Here’s what I think should have happened, if this is correct, perhaps you will be interested in adding this to your install documentation.

1. Upload the entire firestats folder to a directory under the site root (assume this is http://yourdomain.com/firestats).

2. Go to http://yourdomain.com/firestats and set up the database.

3. For each site, upload the appropriate php file to the appropriate directory (in the case of WordPress, firestats-wordpress.php goes in /blogdirectory/wp-content/plugins).

4. For each site, activate the plugin.

5. (WordPress specific) For each site, go to Options | Firestats and identify the directory and URL for the central FireStats install. (In my case, I got the error “Cannot locate http://yourdomain.com/firestats/“, which was strange, since I could browse to it with no problem.)

At this point, the central FireStats Site Management tab should have all the sites listed – this is the other thing I think I did wrong. I tried adding the sites before activating the plugins and I never did get all the site IDs in synch.

I tried removing everything, deleting all the database tables, and reinstalling following the order above, but continued to get the “Cannot find URL” error, and could not get around it. I installed FireStats as a standalone plugin on the multiple blogs instead.

It looks like a fantastic application, and I’d really like to get it working with multiple blogs!

Katja,
what you did sound about right, but your server configuration might be causing some problems.
try to do the following:
1. install a central firestats in your server root.
2. install a full firestats in each blog, but configure them to use the same database as the central one. (you will probably want to drop the firestats tables from the wordpress databases).

Thanks – that seems to have worked. I appreciate your response.

you welcome.

That license could use some clarification with respect to 1) what is a site, and 2) what is a company?

I think you should focus on the content of the blog, for which firestats is used — e.g. “You need a commercial license if the content of your blog is written to directly or indirectly promote a commercial brand or product which is sold for money.”

Allan,
Thanks for your comments.
I used site and not blog because FireStats is not limited to blogs (it runs on other CMS’s as well, and can also be used on any generic PHP page).

I think the current definition is clear enough.

hmm… so take the blog (called SIGPIPE) I link to as my website for this comment.

Is the “site” for SIGPIPE http://macromates.com/? Or is SIGPIPE a site of its own?

Let’s say it is its own site, but that my motivation for writing to the blog is brand building, would you equal that at “indirectly generating money”? I.e. the stronger my brand is, the more money I generate, thus if I do things to strengthen my brand, I indirectly generate money, even though my actions are not directly related to my primary product.

Another question is what exactly you consider a company. I am a single person who owns the macromates.com domain, technically not a company. But I think you would consider that site a company-owned site.

Its hard to come with a strict definition, mostly because its really pretty subjective.
since you don’t own a company, you can run FireStats for free on any blogs who’s main purpose is not generating money.

in my view sigpipe is not (mostly) about making money – but about sharing technical information with people, and as a by-product showing off your technical skill with everything that follows from that.
so about sigpipe, I don’t feel you need a license for it (if you insist I will of course sell you a license for it .

about http://macromates.com/ itself, I think here we both agree that its a commercial site, so for that one you will need to buy a license.

now, to make it more interesting:
suppose you buy a commercial license for macromates.com:
since FireStats supports multiple subsystems on the same server, you can use the same FireStats installation for all the sites there (site = web subsystem).
basically the license is for you to use it on a single machine (Or, considering the increasing popularity of Virtual private servers – for you to use on a Single operating system).

I hope this answers your questions.