RockHeron

FAQ

Do I need Google Analytics for this to work?

No. Everything on the dashboard except the GA4, Search Console and Ads cards comes from your own site.

Will it slow my site down?

The tracking script is roughly 6 KB, loads in the footer, and sends one small beacon per page view. Reports read a pre built daily table rather than scanning raw rows.

Does it work with caching plugins?

Yes. Page views are counted in the browser, so a cached page is still recorded.

The dashboard is empty, where is my history?

The plugin starts recording the day you install it. Open Settings, Import
history from Google Analytics, and it fills the earlier months from your GA4
property. Imported days are dashed on the chart because Google counts sessions
slightly differently.

I took the site over and the old analytics account is not mine

Import your Search Console history instead. Settings, Import search history from
Search Console, upload the export file. It needs no Google connection, because
the site owner always has their own Search Console property even when the
analytics account belongs to a previous agency.

How do I track a specific button?

Open RockHeron, Tracked elements. Give it a name, paste the button’s CSS selector, and tick “count this as a goal” if it matters commercially.

How do I set it up, screen by screen?

Nothing here needs an account anywhere unless you choose to connect Google.

First run, and the screens

1. Activate the plugin and open RockHeron. Recording starts immediately and
   the first visits appear within a minute. There is nothing to switch on.
2. Dashboard is traffic: sessions, daily visitors, page views, goal
   completions and conversion rate, each against the previous period, with cards
   for where visits came from, top pages and traffic over time.
3. Leads is the point of the plugin: every form submission and WooCommerce
   order with the campaign that introduced the person, read as first touch. A
   result nobody could attribute is listed as Not known rather than dropped, so
   these totals never quietly disagree with your form plugin.
4. Tracked elements counts anything you name with a CSS selector: a quote
   button, a telephone link, a PDF download. Tick “count this as a goal” and it
   feeds the conversion figures.
5. Settings holds Google, privacy, retention and the Google tag.

Form plugins are read automatically, never written to. Contact Form 7, WPForms,
Gravity Forms, Elementor Forms, Fluent Forms and WooCommerce are supported, both
WooCommerce checkouts included, and the Leads screen lists which it can see, so
an empty screen tells you why it is empty.

Google: what it is for, and what you need

You do not need Google at all. The plugin records visits and leads from
your own site, in your own database. Connecting Google only adds Google’s own
numbers beside yours. Three independent things:

• Google Analytics 4 reporting. Settings, Google data. Either install Site
  Kit by Google and RockHeron uses its connection, or connect directly. A direct
  connection needs a Google Cloud project with the Analytics Data API enabled
  and an OAuth client of type Web application, whose Client ID and Client secret
  you paste into Settings. The scope is analytics.readonly, read only: nothing
  is written back and no visitor data is sent.
• Google Ads. Only if you switch it on, adding the adwords scope to the
  same connection so spend and clicks can be read.
• Search Console history. No API, no credentials. Export the Performance
  report from Search Console and upload the zip, or the CSVs inside it, in
  Settings.

The Google tag is separate again and off until you enter a measurement ID.
It is the ordinary gtag.js, so switching it on sends Google what the Google tag
always sends: page views, device and IP address, under Google’s terms rather
than ours. The reporting connections above send Google nothing. Leave the field
empty and no tag is loaded.

Campaigns (Pro)

The paid version adds a Campaigns screen that takes a CSV of what each platform
claimed, and shows it beside what this plugin recorded. The column format is
documented at https://rockheron.com/documentation/

Consent, and Do Not Track

Settings, Privacy. Consent mode is off by default, which records every
visit. The other three modes are:

• WP Consent API, for any consent plugin implementing it. Statistics
  consent is required before anything is recorded.
• CookiePile, read directly.
• A cookie you name: give the cookie name and the value meaning consent.

Where a mode is selected but cannot be evaluated, for example the consent plugin
has been deactivated, the plugin fails closed and records nothing.

Consent and Do Not Track are evaluated in the visitor’s browser, not on the
server, because a decision made in PHP is written into your page cache and then
served to the next visitor, whose answer may be the opposite. Respect Do Not
Track is a separate switch in the same panel. Somebody who accepts after the
page has loaded is picked up without a reload.

What is stored, how long, and how to delete it

What is kept about a lead is the campaign and a pointer to the form plugin’s own
entry. No name, no email address, no telephone number, and no advertising
click identifier. Your form plugin already holds the submission, and a second
copy of every lead on your site is a duty rather than a feature.

Three retention settings, all in Settings, Stored data:

• Attribution window, default 30 days. How long the first touch campaign is
  remembered in one first party cookie. 1 to 365.
• Raw events, default 90 days. Individual page views are pruned nightly
  after this; the daily totals they roll up into are kept.
• Leads, default 400 days. 30 to 3650.

To remove everything: Settings, Stored data deletes recorded data without
uninstalling. Uninstalling with “delete my data” on drops every table, option,
transient and scheduled job the plugin created, found by prefix rather than from
a list. Deactivating removes only the scheduled jobs, so your data survives an
update.

How the lists are stored

Lists like top pages, referrers, campaigns and landing pages are rolled up once
a day. Each day keeps its busiest rows by name and sums the rest into a single
“everything else” figure, so the stored rows account for the whole day however
long the list.

The totals are right either way. A cap changes only how much of the long
tail is broken out by name: a page ranking below it every day is still counted,
inside that one figure rather than under its own address.

Defaults are 200 rows a day for pages and landing paths, 100 for referrers,
campaigns, outbound links and searches, and 50 for lists that cannot produce
more anyway, such as device, browser and country. Settings, Stored data has
one field, “Rows kept per list, per day”, setting a single number for every
list; zero, the default, leaves each on its own. The rockheron_dim_limit
filter takes ( $limit, $dim ) to raise one list without the rest.

Each extra row is kept for good, since the daily totals outlive the raw events
behind them, so raising this on a site with thousands of URLs costs table rows
for every day the site runs.

Troubleshooting

• The dashboard is empty. The plugin knows only what it has recorded since
  activation; it cannot see the past. Check you are not logged in as an
  administrator or editor: those roles are excluded by default, in Settings,
  What to record, so browsing your own site while logged in deliberately
  records nothing.
• Nothing appears on a cached site. Recording runs in the browser and does
  not need an uncached page. If you see nothing, check your caching or
  optimization plugin is not deferring or stripping the script.
• Leads are missing. The Leads screen lists the form plugins it can see. If
  yours is absent it is not supported yet. If it is listed but entries are not
  arriving, confirm the form completes: a submission that fails validation is
  not a lead.
• Google numbers will not load. Reconnect in Settings, Google data. An
  expired or revoked connection reports the error it received rather than
  showing zero, because zero is a real figure and a broken connection must not
  produce one.
• Figures disagree with Google. They will, always, and neither is wrong.
  Google counts sessions its own way and loses what consent and ad blockers
  take; this plugin counts what reached your database. Both are shown, never
  reconciled.

Support

• Documentation: https://rockheron.com/documentation/
• Support: https://rockheron.com/support/
• Email: support@rockheron.com

Bring us the problem whichever route you bought by. Quote your license key if
you have one; otherwise the site address is enough.