A Hint of Minty Freshness

Recently I was in a discussion with a good friend of mine who is a database management expert. We concluded that site tracking and SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an important tool for any successful website

Inspired, I look at all my little site tracking widgets that I use; Stat Counter, Mybloglog, Site Counter, and Extreme Tracker, and decided I wanted more from my site tracking and decided to actually put some money down for this additional marketing function. As usual, I only opt for yearly deals and what I get vs. function. However, all the site tracking services I looked at seem to do almost everything, most of which a web newbie like myself doesn’t need or understand.
That’s when a hint of minty freshness in a form of a leaf probed the back of my mind.
A few months ago, I stumbled over this new site-tracking software called mint. However, unlike Stat Counter or Extreme Tracker, the use of the product was not free, so I ignored exploring further what Mint could do. However now being in the mood to pay, this product’s simple name and branding came up tops in my mind’s eye of advertising and product recall.

Overview
Designed by a rare breed of web designer and developer, Shaun Inman, Mint is a site tracking program you install on your server rather than someone else’s, like Stat counter.

Mint provides a fresh look at your site. It is concise, flexible and timely. And to sweeten the deal, this delicious little bundle of PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript joy is referrer-spam-proof.

Having it on your server, I realize, is a good thing, as you can now decide how detailed or fanatical you want to be in keeping track of your stats. This is because, logically the more fanatical you are, the more database space it will take up on your server. Or if you are like me, just cruising along, it’s barely noticeable.
Being the designer type that I am, the beauty of the layout in which the stats were presented grabbed me immediately. Hats off to him as, in the 1-hour product review I did on him and Mint, he is apparently so good people swear, not by but AT him, in a good sort of way.
Here is another example of Shaun’s cleverness. Mint’s add-on top software for additional functionality is called Pepper. Get it? Pepper + Mint? Smart fellow Shaun.
Now convinced that he, with his program, would tell a newbie like me what I needed in a web tracking program, I proceed to spend the next hour testing my server’s compatibility and installed the software.
Installation
Installation is a little complicated and requires you to have some understanding of MySQL database management. However, the instructions provided are quite good, and the Mint forum had good information on how to install WordPress.
Here are a few tips from me when installing this program:
1) If you are the type that doesn’t like to read instructions, this is the time to kick the habit unless you want to royally screw up your server. I read and re-read the instructions three times, and even then, I took it to step by step.
2) If you are wondering which database to use or whether create a new one? You would need to install the program onto the database that belongs to the site you want to track. For example, for me, I installed it into my WordPress Database.
3) A smart fellow called Dave created a Mint WordPress Plugin, that links the product with the front end of WordPress and gets it up and running on your blog without doing any programming and mucking around with the javascript.
Using Mint
Simply, it does what it says on the box. With its clean and well-designed layout I got all the important information I was looking for. I won’t go into too much detail of the product as the Mint site already does a good job, but the feature I found the most exciting was tracking my most popular pages and posts.

This feature tracks the most popular pages and combines all the hits coming from the same source together. This is just simple readability and logic that the other trackers dont get, as most display it as individual single hits.
Conclusion
One of the big motivators for me to make a purchase is price. All the other sites I had described have a recurring monthly or yearly payment scheme.
Mint on the other hand, is like buying a software program for your computer. You just pay a one-off license fee for tracking a single website domain. If you have multiple domains that need tracking, you just need to buy more licenses per domain. At this time, all Mint software updates are even free.
Of course, Mint only applies to people hosting their own blogs or websites on their servers, but coming in at USD$ 30 (payment by Paypal) it’s a lot cheaper than many of those yearly recurring payment sites, and being a one-off payment scheme is definitely a prudent business decision.

Edit: All the Pepper Plugins for Mint can be found here!