Rick Hellewell

<p>Google Analytics (GA) allows you to see what your visitors are doing on your site. The common installation is to run some JavaScript code in the client’s browser that reports back to GA. The problem with that is many ad-blockers will block that client-side (browser) action, resulting in incomplete GA data.</p>
<p>The Server Side Analytics plugin does all the work on your server. So GA is used on all site visits – even visitors using ad blocking. That gives you more accurate GA data.</p>
<p>Your site visitor’s IP address is anonymized (the last ‘octet’ is removed), so only the visitor’s city is known. The plugin only uses the client-side WordPress session ID, so complies with basic GDPR privacy, as long as your site has an acknowledged cookie policy. There is nothing additionally stored on the client side, so visitor privacy for this plugin and the generated analytics is assured.</p>
<p>All you need is a GA account – start here: https://www.google.com/analytics/ . Note that you will need to set up a “UA” type account. Help starts here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9306384?hl=en   Make sure you set up a “Universal Analytics” account – which will result in a UA-xxxxxxx-1 value to use in the plugin.</p>
<p>If you use Google Analytics, then you should be aware of their privacy policy, which could apply to your use of GA; see it here https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html . You may also need a cookie policy and acknowledgement displayed on your site.</p>
<p>We suggest that you consult with your legal advisor for specific methods and messages needed for GDPR compliance on your site. We provide no warranty or guarantee of GDPR compliance. We are not providing any legal advice. We are not responsible in any way for your use of our suggested GDPR solution. Your mileage may vary. Objects in mirror are closer than you expect. All aspirin is alike. Professional driver on a closed course.  Your mileage may vary.</p>
<h3>Privacy</h3>
<p>This plugin does not save any personal information on your server. It will store cookies on your visitor’s browsers. If you have enabled Google Analytics, it will also store a randomly-generated ID value as a cookie; there is no personal information associated with that cookie. The plugin does not share information with others.</p>


CellarWeb Server Side Analytics

Allows using Google Analytics via server-side request. Many ad blockers block client-side Google Analytics, resulting in incomplete values.

Thomas Geiger

<p>Google Tag Manager (GTM) is Google’s free tool for everyone to manage and deploy analytics and marketing tags as well as other code snippets<br />
using an intuitive web UI. To learn more about this tool, visit the <a href="https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/tag-manager/" rel="nofollow ugc">official website</a>.</p>
<p>This plugin places the GTM container code snippets onto your WordPress website so that you do not need to add it manually.<br />
Multiple containers are also supported!</p>
<p>The plugin complements your GTM setup by pushing page meta data and user information into the so called data layer.<br />
Google’s official help pages includes <a href="https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/datalayer#datalayer" rel="nofollow ugc">more details about the data layer</a>.</p>
<p><strong>PHP 7.4 is required to use this plugin.</strong></p>
<h4>GTM container code placement</h4>
<p>The original GTM container code is divided into two parts:</p>
<p>The first part is a javascript code snippet that is added to the <code><head></code> section of every page of the website.<br />
This part is critical to enable all features of GTM, and this plugin helps to place this part<br />
correctly on your site.</p>
<p>The second part is an iframe snippet that acts as a failsafe/fallback should users’ JavaScript be disabled.<br />
Google recommends – for best performance – to place this code snippet directly after the opening <code><body></code> tag on each page.</p>
<p>Albeit not ideal, it will work when placed lower in the code. This plugin provides a code placement option for the second code snippet.</p>
<p>If your WordPress theme is compatible with the additions of WordPress 5.2 then this plugin will place this second code to the right place.<br />
Users of the Genisis theme, GeneratePress theme, Elementor, Oxygen Builder and Beaver Builder Theme will also have this placed correctly.<br />
To utilize this, set the compatibility mode in plugin options to off.</p>
<p>All other users can place this second code snippet using a custom PHP code (“Manually coded” option) or select the so called “Footer” option to<br />
add the code lower in the code (it is not the recommended way but will work)</p>
<h4>Basic data included</h4>
<ul>
<li>post/page titles</li>
<li>post/page dates</li>
<li>post/page category names</li>
<li>post/page tag names</li>
<li>post/page author ID and name</li>
<li>post/page ID</li>
<li>post types</li>
<li>post format</li>
<li>post count on the current page + in the current category/tag/taxonomy</li>
<li>custom terms associated with any post type</li>
<li>logged in status</li>
<li>logged in user role</li>
<li>logged in user ID (to track cross device behaviour in Google Analytics)</li>
<li>logged in user email address (both unhashed and SHA256 hased values to be used with tracking)</li>
<li>logger in user creation date</li>
<li>site search data</li>
<li>site name and id (for WordPress multisite instances)</li>
<li>IP address of the visitor (please use the explicit consent of the visitor to utilize this)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Browser / OS / Device data</h4>
<ul>
<li>browser data (name, version, engine)</li>
<li>OS data (name, version)</li>
<li>device data (type, manufacturer, model)</li>
</ul>
<p>Data is provided using the WhichBrowser library: http://whichbrowser.net/</p>
<h4>Weather data</h4>
<p>(beta)</p>
<p>Push data about users’ current weather conditions into the dataLayer. This can be used to generate weather-related<br />
audience/remarketing lists on ad platforms and allows for user segmentation in your web analytics solutions:</p>
<ul>
<li>weather category (clouds, rain, snow, etc.)</li>
<li>weather description: more detailed data</li>
<li>temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit</li>
<li>air pressure</li>
<li>wind speed and degrees</li>
</ul>
<p>Weather data is queried from Open Weather Map. Depending on your websites traffic, additional fees may apply:<br />
http://openweathermap.org/price</p>
<p>An (free) API key from OpenWeatherMap is required for this feature to work.</p>
<p>ipstack.com is used to determine the site visitor’s location. A (free) API key from IPStack.com is required for this feature to work:<br />
https://ipstack.com/product</p>
<h4>Media player events</h4>
<p>(experimental)</p>
<p>Track users’ interaction with any embedded media:</p>
<ul>
<li>YouTube</li>
<li>Vimeo</li>
<li>Soundcloud</li>
</ul>
<p>DataLayer events can be chosen to fire upon media player load, media is being played, paused/stopped and optionally when<br />
the user reaches 10, 20, 30, …, 90, 100% of the media duration.</p>
<p>Tracking is supported for embedded media using the built-in oEmbed feature of WordPress as well as most other media plugins<br />
and copy/pasted codes. Players injected into the website after page load are not currently supported.</p>
<h4>Scroll tracking</h4>
<p>Fire tags based on how the visitor scrolls from the top to the bottom of a page.<br />
An example would be to separate “readers” (who spend a specified amount of time on a page) from “scrollers”<br />
(who only scroll through within seconds). You can use these events to fire Analytics tags and/or remarketing/conversion tags<br />
(for micro conversions).</p>
<p>Scroll tracking is based on the solution originally created by</p>
<ul>
<li>Nick Mihailovski</li>
<li>Thomas Baekdal</li>
<li>Avinash Kaushik</li>
<li>Joost de Valk</li>
<li>Eivind Savio</li>
<li>Justin Cutroni</li>
</ul>
<p>Original script:<br />
http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/21/advanced-content-tracking-with-google-analytics-part-1/</p>
<h4>Blacklist & Whitelist Tag Manager tags, triggers and variables</h4>
<p>To increase website security, you have the option to white- and blacklist tags/triggers/variables.<br />
You can prevent specific tags from firing or the use of certain variable types regardless of your GTM setup.</p>
<p>If the Google account associated with your GTM account is being hacked, an attacker could easily<br />
execute malware on your website without accessing its code on your hosting server. By blacklisting custom HTML tags<br />
and/or custom JavaScript variables you can secure the Tag Manager container.</p>
<h4>Integration</h4>
<p>Google Tag Manager for WordPress integrates with several popular plugins. More integration to come!</p>
<ul>
<li>Contact Form 7: fire an event when a Contact Form 7 form was submitted with any result (mail sent, mail failed, spam detected, invalid input)</li>
<li>WooCommerce:
<ul>
<li>Implementation of <a href="https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/ecommerce-ga4" rel="nofollow ugc">GA4 E-commerce</a></li>
<li>Does not support promotions since WooCommerce does not have such a feature (yet)</li>
<li>Does not support refunds</li>
<li>Compatibility with High Performance Order Storage (HPOS)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>AMP: load your AMP container on the AMP version of your pages</li>
<li>Cookiebot: use automatic cookie blocking mode if needed</li>
<li>Google Consent Mode v2: fire the “default” command with specific consent flags to integrat with non-certified Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) and plugins.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Server side containers</h4>
<p>If you are using a <a href="https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/serverside/send-data#update_the_gtmjs_source_domain" rel="nofollow ugc">server side container</a><br />
you can enter your custom domain name and custom path to load gtm.js from your there.</p>
<h4>Exclude specific user roles from being tracked</h4>
<p>You can set which user roles needs to be excluded from tracking when a user with that role visits the frontend. This will completely disable the container code for that user.</p>


GTM4WP – A Google Tag Manager (GTM) plugin for WordPress

The plugin worked well but then an issue is caused with another plugin. I offered my help to troubleshoot this but there is no response in weeks in the support forum. Also to other threads than mine.

No support since weeks

Working as expected.


I’m disappointed with the support for this plugin. I submitted a question over a week ago, but I have yet to receive any response from the support team.



While the plugin itself may work fine, having reliable support is critical, especially when issues arise. Unfortunately, the lack of responsiveness has made it difficult to trust this plugin for long-term use.



I hope the team improves their support response time in the future.


Poor Support Experience

Advanced tag management for WordPress with Google Tag Manager

CellarWeb Server Side Analytics vs GTM4WP – A Google Tag Manager (GTM) plugin for WordPress