by Elliot Swan 

I’m a stats freak.

I’ll check out my stats for elliotswan.com several times a day, and I’ll check the stats for my other sites now and then as well. If you own a site, I’m sure you love looking through your stats too. Whatever your reason, be it for fun, money, or pure ego, admit it—your site’s stats are quite helpful and just plain fun to look through.

Well, with all the hype this past month, you’ve probably wondered whether you should draw from the bowl and Have yourself a Mint. If you’ve never even heard of Mint and are wondering how on earth I got from statistics to fresh breath, here’s a basic rundown of what Mint is: It’s a stats program at the price of $30 a site, it’s built by Shaun Inman, and it has been one of the top subjects among many web designers and developers last month. It originated from another stats program of Shaun’s, ShortStat.

But you’re going to want way more information than that if you’re going to spend your hard-earned cash on another stats program. I mean what really makes this thing great?

Looks and Functionality

This thing looks amazing. The colors are Minty fresh, and the layout is just beautiful. Shaun used combination of images, CSS, JavaScript, and yes, AJAX, to make this thing really shine.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at these screenshots…



Also in the visits pane it would show past month and past year. If you hit the Mint logo it will reload the page, so you can see any new hits. What you see off to the right is a referrer pane, where you can see what sites are bringing you in hits.


This is the same bar that had the Mint logo you saw in the previous screenshot. It is fixed at the top of your window, so navigation is easy. Click any of those links, and it will use JavaScript to scroll your page up or down to your selected pane. No, I’m not just talking about your normal anchor names; I’m talking about real scrolling.



Now you’re probably wondering what this is. This screen shot is of part of the preferences page, where among other things you can click and drag the order your panes will show up on the main page. Quite handy, and quite cool.

No more referrer spam
Yes, you heard me right: You will no longer have to look through your referrer list and wonder why on earth some of those sites are even there. Mint uses JavaScript to validate all refers, so spam bots don’t mess up your stats.

PepperNo review of Mint would be complete without talking about Pepper. After all, Pepper makes Mint better.
Is there something that you think Mint lacks? Pepper lets you create it.

One of the smartest things Shaun did when building Mint was allowing developers to tap into Mint’s API to create plugins, or Pepper. While the API has not yet been documented (it’s on the to-do list), a few developers have already been working away and released some amazing Peppers, which you can find more about at the Mint Forum.

Got an idea for Mint, but don’t think you can make it? Suggest it on the Mint Forums and if it’s well accepted and possible, somebody is sure to go for it.

Now, I’ve spent a lot of time on some of the great things about Mint, but what are the cons?

Not all hits (or refers) will be counted

If your visitors don’t have JavaScript enabled, as far as Mint’s concerned they don’t exist.
You have to include some JavaScript at the top of every page you want Mint to track (there is also an advanced method using .htaccess that will automatically include the JavaScript for you), so if your visitor doesn’t have JavaScript Mint can’t track them.

Server and Browser Requirements (on your end)
From the Mint Requirements page:

Mint was developed and beta tested on various Linux servers running Apache with a MySQL database (3.x and up), and PHP scripting (4.2.3 and up). PHP can be run as an Apache module or PHP-as-CGI. Support for Windows servers running Apache is planned but not an immediate priority.

There is also a “Mint Server Compatibility Suite” that you can run to make sure that your server has the “basic features Mint requires.” It does not however, guarantee that it will work on your server.

When you’re checking out your stats, you will have to use “modern browser with support for transparent PNGs, modern DOM scripting (including XMLHTTPRequest) with competency in CSS 2.” Both FireFox and Safari both work great, however you will not currently be able to view your stats with IE. Apparently PC IE support is planned, but “not an immediate priority. IE Mac will not be supported.”
See the Requirements page for the full deal.

No tracking spiders
Because JavaScript is required for Mint to register you as a hit, search engine spiders will not show up in your hits. On the other hand, that also means that your stats won’t be skewed by non-humans. This does not mean that Mint won’t show what searches you get hit for, only what the search engine bots are doing on your site.

Is Mint right for me?
You decide. I’ve given quite an overview of what Mint does and doesn’t do (though if you want to see exactly what panes you can get I strongly advise you to check out haveamint.com, and check out the Pepper section of the Mint Forum to see what Peppers you can get as well).
It isn’t like the stat program to end all, but for most people I think it is definitely a stat program to use daily. If you want to check about users without JavaScript support and see what bots are doing on your site, then you’d want to pull out something like AwStats.

For me, Mint is perfect. I love getting up in the morning and opening up Mint to see what fresh new stats I have, and I’m pretty sure you will too.