Thanks maximevalette for your reply. If you are referring to disable columns check-box in wordpress screen options, this solution won’t help me as my site is multi-members (multi-contributors) and it’s impractical to expect that all logged-in users would disable this option. But it’s not an issue for me as I could locate the code in your plugin to disable the filter and the action that add extra column.
I face different issue: There are four type of page/post reads values I observe in 3-4 days of trial (‘Cache time’ is chosen as ‘One Day’):
(i) correct reads value – no issues, most of posts are showing correct reads
(ii) default reads – in my case default value is set to ‘Unavailable’- hardly one or two instances where I found this value
(iii) 0 (Zero) – mainly new posts. So I believe it’s correct reads as google itself may not have updates
(iv) blank (nothing is printed/returned by php function) – I have no Idea about this case. I found even old posts that showed correct reads a day ago show blank; and the frequency of such instances is significant.
I have few suggestions to make plugin more robust. I tried reading your code but pardon me for lack of my technical knowledge, I couldn’t understand it much. So it may be possible that my suggestions are already in.
(a) Is there possibility not to update earlier reads value of a post if google API returns no-value/error? In this case plugin continues to show earlier reads value for a post. Additionally, in case of no-value or error return of google API, perhaps not to set ‘time to refresh’ for that post reads value so that in the subsequent php function call to get reads, plugin again tries to request to google.
(b) Current option ‘start date for the analytics’ is a good feature. Nonetheless if we want to show total reads, obviously this value should be start of the analytics account. And perhaps in this case google API response may take more time or load google server more for the latest published posts. I think it’s good idea to also provide alternative to fetch reads from the publishing day of the post.
I know I am asking too much from a free plugin. But it’s the plugin that I have been desperately looking for. Are you planning pro-version? or is there any? Anyway I’ll pay/contribute for this plugin after couple of weeks trial.
PS: My website is on WP Engine and I am using there inbuilt cache. I don’t mind refreshing WP Engine cache manually everyday. Anyway I see that everyday value of reads are updated without manually refreshing the WP Engine cache
Many thanks and best regards,
