Have A Mint - Any good?

Bryan Le · 03-13-06, 01:22 PM

www.HaveAMint.com - is this service any good? I've seen it get really popular, but all it really looks like is a beautified version of aw stats, urchin stats, with intergrated ajax and a nice look to it.

Is it worth it? I think you can track multiple stats for several sites at once, if that is the case, then I'd love that - so I dont need to check out 5 different cPanels everyday...

Super Mod · 03-13-06, 01:56 PM

I've heard some really great things, but I haven't tried them out myself. I am thinking about doing it with some of my up-and-coming projects. I'd love to hear what other people thought about it.

**Max** · 03-13-06, 02:24 PM

I might buy a license just to test it out. In my opinion, he is riding the web 2.0 hype.

A mentor at SitePoint made a good point:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Si

To be honest, its more hype than its worth. For starters, Shaun is asking for $30 before you can even see a working version. Once you have it, you need to install it on an Apache server (not much good for any Windows servers) with PHP and mySQL. All your data is then stored within a mySQL database which just seems to be duplicating the majority of your log file data. PLUS, as its using JavaScript to do the majority of the tracking, you are dependent on modern browsers, not much good when you might want to track other browsers such as PDAs etc.

Source

Bryan Le · 03-13-06, 03:43 PM

Wow - that just really swayed my opinion.

**Chris Gwynne** · 03-13-06, 04:06 PM

There's nothing special about it, fancy design, that's about all. AWStats can do that for you. Google Analytics can do that for you.

There's even a free Shortstat (pre haveamint) Wordpress plugin. There's really not much point in buying it.

stef686 · 03-13-06, 04:54 PM

I purchase a license pretty much when it was released and will disagree with the general opinion on display here. I really like it.

Yes - good points have been made about the javascript etc. I agree with that, which is why I only have it on one site and after using analytics will probably not look back.

What I like about it is the way it is built. The "pepper" API is a very good piece of coding and has prompted a whole host of useful additions to mint.

May not be the best out there, but well worth the $30 in my opinion.

Oh, and I believe shortstat is a stand alone stats package no just for wordpress, it is extremely outdated and unstable from what I've seen. They aren't the same (SI wrote mint from scratch) but mint was based on it following all the feedback and stuff he got about shortstat.

anteater · 03-13-06, 05:09 PM

I would never pay for this.
Firstly, it's new. He should give it away for free to get people aware of it.

Secondly, GA, Awstats and various other online tools can do the same thing for free.
Web 2.0 means nothing to me, I really don't see the value in paying for this service.

Granger · 03-14-06, 06:57 PM

I don't see why this is any better than the free resources out there like AW Stats? Is it better? What are the advantages of Have a Mint?

Bryan Le · 03-14-06, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Granger

I don't see why this is any better than the free resources out there like AW Stats? Is it better? What are the advantages of Have a Mint?

A feature that seems to be drawing me in, is that anyone can access your stats. (I think). This way, if you plan on selling a site, you can just have then look at www.yourname.com/mint - rather then taking SS's of awstats...

Not sure if this is an actual feature though.

**Max** · 03-14-06, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryan Le

A feature that seems to be drawing me in, is that anyone can access your stats. (I think). This way, if you plan on selling a site, you can just have then look at www.yourname.com/mint - rather then taking SS's of awstats...

Not sure if this is an actual feature though.

I know you can make awstats public but I'm not sure if you can make it dynamic. If you right click => view source awstats, it's coded so that it will display perfectly if you copied it into a .html file. I'm sure a simple script could keep it updated.