Hi. I have been trying to get visit stats happening on my blog, and that has just led to confusion, as any documentation I find seems to contradict what I have in front of me, and looking into the subject further, I just got more and more confused. It almost seems like there's multiple ways to actually have a WordPress blog, and as such, it's (seemingly) often talking about 'another method' than mine in the documentation.
Let me start by just explaining what I did to get to where I am now...
I downloaded WordPress and installed it. A blog was successfully created in my webspace (...I have a web domain, with my websites there...).
Everything is working just fine. When I want to add to my blog, I just go to the actual blog url, log in, and go to the Site Admin page from the side menu. That all works great.
But, when looking into visit stats, I get seemingly contradictory info... It SEEMS that documentation on it is saying that WordPress comes with a free stat feature already, which puts smiley faces at the bottom of (some) screen... yet I don't have that. Further reading seems to say that I need to enter my key... which I wasn't sure I had in the first place.
I then went to WordPress.com, to see if I could find any further info... and even there it was weird... as my user name and password were different there than what I use to log into my blog normally. I managed to get in after resetting my password, and found an admin page similar to the one in my regular blog Site Admin dashboard.... but this had stats, amoung other features. Only problem then, was it claims I have no blogs.
I'm starting to suspect there are two different types of WordPress blogs, for one thing.... One using the installer, and one that is done online via the WordPress.com site... but I have no idea.
So, some of the questions:
1) Is using the downloaded installer for WordPress the same as setting up a blog via the WordPress.com website?
2) If not, is there no connection/communication between the two (...ex. WordPress.com will not know I have a blog via the installer)
3) Are the two ways using different accounts? (Seems to be different passwords and user names)
4) Does the installed version (as opposed to WordPress.com site version) have stats built in? I can't find them anywhere... aside from Dashboard stats about how many posts/pages I have created... not visit stats.
5) How do I get stats happening using the installed version of WordPress?
6) If a key is needed, where do I get that key? Do I use the one I just found on WordPress.com, or is that for a different (WordPress.com) account?
I hope you can help me out on this. Again, the blog has been running fine, etc. I'm just now confused about the seemingly separate WordPress.com account, the lack of stats on the installed version, and the general (seeming) discrepency between the documentation I've been finding online vs the screens of the installed version I'm running (...references menus, etc that don't seem to exist on mine).
BTW, I have the latest verison of WordPress. I do not have the spam block activated (haven't put in the key), and I currently have the blog set so that search engines do not see it.... if that might be one of the factors here.
Thanks