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This column is usually written towards the end of each week so that means that I'm getting into wind-down mode by the time I get to write this. Sure, it might only be Thursday but why wait till Friday to start winding down?

This week though wind-down mode just doesn't seem to be happening for me. Most weeks seem to fly by but this one really is dragging for some reason. It's not dragging because I have nothing to do but probably because all the jobs that I need to get finished by tomorrow are big ones and they're taking time to get through.

Oh well I'll just keep plodding along with them and hopefully the weekend will arrive sooner rather than later. So to help it along let's jump into this week's column and I thought we would start by looking at a couple of interesting tools that I've just come across.

Google Analytics and WordPress
I have to say that I have become a huge fan of WordPress over the last year or so. Gone are the days when all it was good for was running a blog and these days, because our clients all seem to think that they can manage their websites, we're building a lot of stuff in WordPress.

At the same time as we build these sites we usually open a Google Analytics account for each client and show them where to go and what to do to see how well their website is working. Unfortunately though Google Analytics seems to be the one thing most of them forget about.

We give them the links to their Analytics account but they rarely go there and before too long those that do go there begin to forget about it too. So perhaps the best way to help them really see what's happening with their websites would be to have Google Analytics somehow integrated with the WordPress dashboard.

And that's something that would work for any adult webmaster who happens to be using WordPress for some of their work too. Integrating Google Analytics into WordPress isn't hard to do either thanks to a plugin that you can pick up in the WordPress plugin repository.

The plugin you need is called 'Google Analytics Dashboard' and one you've installed it there's a small amount of configuring to do but if you're reading this then you've almost certainly got more than the limited skills needed to get this plugin working.

Backing up WordPress
So if you're running multiple WordPress sites what are you doing to backup each database? Of course there are a number of plugins available on the WordPress plugin site that say they will do the job ... and I'm sure that most of them do work but ...

When I'm looking at plugins I want things that really do work with the minimum of fiddling but if I have to do more than point and click at the options I want then that plugin is headed for the 'too hard' basket and that's where most of the backup plugins that I've tried end up.

There was a very easy to use backup plugin that emails the backups each day but that one hasn't been updated in a while and now it seems to have disappeared from the WordPress site so we've been on the lookout for something else and we might have found what we're looking for. The only drawback for some people is that's going to cost you a whole $19.00.

I guess if $19.00 is too much for you then you can stop reading now but if you're prepared to treat your business like a real one and invest some money into it then $19.00 will be well worth it.

The plugin is called Snapshot and you can get it from wpmu.org. It allows you to backup everything from individual parts of your database to the whole damn thing if you want it to and you can set it to run hourly, daily, weekly or even monthly. The backup can be uploaded to cloud storage, dumped into your Dropbox account or even sent to you via FTP.

It's definitely one that we're going to be installing on a couple of our own sites before we unleash it on our customers' sites. Oh ... and did I say that for $19.00 you can install it on as many sites as you want?

And that's it from me for this week and this month. Just let me leave you with one very scary thought ... by the time this appears on Rated Hot there will be just 59 days till Christmas ... even less if you run an online shop.