I’m testing a new plugin for Wordpress that keeps track of visitors to your website.

Firestats is still in beta, but it’s looking incredibly attractive already. One simple plugin activation in your WP admin panel, and you’ll start getting in a flood of information about who (and what) is visiting your website.

Unlike most other stats packages available, where Firestats really shines is in its ability to drill down to the information you actually want to see. Its big feature as of the 0.9.x beta release is the ability to filter your stats, eliminating bots that are constantly crawling your website. By eliminating all that extra crap data, you can actually (and easily) see the user data you really care about.

Thus far, I’ve been particularly impressed. Omry, the developer of Firestats, hangs out in the Wordpress IRC channel, and is very responsive to suggestions and bug reports. With his excellent start on this plugin, I’ve been able to easily realize just how few real viewers I have, and just how many bots are out and about crawling around the web on a daily basis.

It’s not the most feature-packed plugin available (yet), but it’s off to a good start. If you’re looking for a new stats plugin, or just want to see what kind of development progress is made, I highly recommend that you check out Firestats and see for yourself just how much of your blog’s traffic isn’t real traffic.