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Simple Blog Stats

By Jeff Starr

Analytics & Reporting / Traffic & Visitor Analytics

Reviewed by Abdul Hameid

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Simple Blog Stats Review - In-Depth Analysis

Simple Blog Stats displays useful statistics about your site. It shows total posts, pages, categories, tags, and more.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.74/10

User Rating

4.9/5 (based on 38+ reviews)

Active Installations

4,000+

Update Frequency

Below Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

5 / 10 (Medium Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

Simple Blog Stats (SBS) provides shortcodes and tags to display site statistics in posts, pages, and anywhere in your theme.

This plugin displays a wealth of useful statistics about your site. You can view the total number of posts, pages, categories, tags, and much more.

With features like caching for better performance and options to configure text or markup, this plugin enhances your site's statistics display.

It provides a slick settings screen and works with or without the Gutenberg Block Editor. The plugin is regularly updated and does not collect or store any user data, ensuring user privacy.

Comparing to Alternatives

Simple Blog Stats stands out in the WordPress statistics plugin category with several viable alternatives available for users seeking different features or interfaces.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly rated with a 4.9 average from 38 reviews
Simple and user-friendly interface
Flexible enough to accommodate various website styles
Provides useful observability features for team collaboration
Regular updates addressing security vulnerabilities

Weaknesses

Has a medium security risk due to a past stored XSS vulnerability
Security fix was applied only in a later version, requiring users to update
May lack some advanced features found in other premium plugins
Limited information on premium features compared to competitors

User Sentiment Analysis

User reviews overwhelmingly praise Simple Blog Stats, reflected in its 4.9-star average and absence of low ratings, indicating strong satisfaction.

Positive highlights

'Great plugin, simple and complete' — Roger
'Superb! Love it! Thanks for making it.' — snoop23
'Simple, objective and amazing' — superbr
'Simple and very useful' — terps001
'Really useful plugin' — vadim s. sabinich

Common complaints

Weaknesses

Past security vulnerability requiring update
Limited advanced features compared to some alternatives

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Users seeking a straightforward, reliable, and highly rated statistics plugin with a simple interface and essential features for monitoring blog activity.

Not ideal for

Users requiring advanced analytics or those highly concerned about security might prefer alternatives with more robust features or a cleaner security history.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers essential blog statistics with simplicity and ease of use, suitable for most basic tracking needs.

Pro version

The pro version likely includes enhanced features and additional flexibility, although specific premium features are not clearly detailed.

Final Verdict

Simple Blog Stats is a highly rated and user-friendly plugin that effectively meets the needs of users wanting straightforward blog statistics. Its strong positive user feedback and regular updates make it a dependable choice for most WordPress users.

However, users should be aware of a past medium-level security vulnerability that has been addressed in recent updates. Those needing advanced analytics or with heightened security concerns may want to explore other alternatives.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Simple Blog Stats plugin.

blog statistics

site stats

post counts

Screenshots

FAQ

The plugin provides a filter hook for customizing the total number of posts that are displayed using the [sbs_posts] shortcode. To do it, add the following snippet to your theme functions.php file, or add via custom plugin:

function sbs_get_posts_limit_custom($limit) { return 100; } add_filter('sbs_get_posts_limit', 'sbs_get_posts_limit_custom');

No changes need made; simply edit the 100 to whatever is desired and done.

By default the [sbs_updated] shortcode includes only posts that have “publish” post status. To customize the post status, add the following code to your theme (or child theme’s) functions.php file, or add via custom plugin:

function sbs_updated_post_status($status) {       return 'publish,draft,pending'; // whatever post statuses  } add_filter('sbs_updated_post_status', 'sbs_updated_post_status');

Notice where it says publish,draft,pending, that determines which post statuses are included. You can change/edit as needed.

By default the [sbs_updated] shortcode includes only posts (post type = post). To customize the post type, add the following code to your theme (or child theme’s) functions.php file, or add via custom plugin:

function sbs_updated_post_type($type) {      return array('post', 'book'); // whatever post types  } add_filter('sbs_updated_post_type', 'sbs_updated_post_type');

You can edit the return array with whatever post types are required.

By default, the plugin formats long numbers with commas. To remove/disable the commas for the [sbs_media_count] shortcode, add the following code to your theme (or child theme) functions.php, or add via custom plugin:

function sbs_include_commas($enable) { return false; } add_filter('sbs_include_commas', 'sbs_include_commas');

Save changes and done. Note: currently this works only with the shortcode, [sbs_media_count].

For sites with many many posts and/or posts with LOTS of words. Depending on server capacity, PHP may time out when trying to go through and count everything. As a workaround solution, it’s possible to disable the “all word count” shortcode by adding the following code to your theme functions.php, or add via custom plugin:

function sbs_word_count_all_disable($disable) { return true; } add_filter('sbs_word_count_all_disable', 'sbs_word_count_all_disable');

By default, the shortcode [sbs_word_count_all] counts words in posts from any/all post types. To customize the post type, add the following code to your theme functions.php, or add via custom plugin:

function sbs_word_count_all_post_type($type) {      return array('post', 'page', 'movie', 'book'); // whatever post types  } add_filter('sbs_word_count_all_post_type', 'sbs_word_count_all_post_type');

You can customize the post types in the array as desired.