Configuring Google Analytics
Overview
Notes about configuring Google Analytics.
It seems like every time I research this topic, Google has implemented a totally different approach, so it's quite likely that some or all of this page will be outdated before too long.
Google Tag Manager
Create a new Account for each client.
Create a new Container for each of the client's platforms.
The container id's for each container can be found on the Accounts page in the Container ID column.
The tag code that gets inserted into the pages of the site can be found through Accounts tab > select a container > Admin tab > Container column > Install Google Tag Manager
Creating a tag
The simplest tag is a Page View.
Google Tag Manager > Container tab > Right Column > Tags > New button.
- Product: Google Analytics
- Tag Type: Universal Analytics
- Configure Tag:
- Tracking ID: enter the Google Analytics Tracking ID for the site
- Track Type: Page View
- Fire On: All Pages
- Click Create button
- Important! On the next page click the Publish button in the upper right.
What this will do is link the tag manager to Google Analytics. The Tag Manager fires off page view events to Google Analytics as they happen. With this configuration, any legacy Google Analytics tracking code is unnecessary on the site.
Troubleshooting
404 error for googletagmanager.com
Use case
- Load page in browser
- Open Chrome Developer Tools console
- Error in the console: "Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)" for url http://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id=[tag_id]
Cause
The tag has not been published.
Fix
Go to Google Tag Manager, locate the container, view its tags, and publish.
Inserting GTM code into Django templates
Django templating system
There is an existing Django package named django-google-tag-manager. This package works with Django templates, but does not work with Jinja2 templates.
Jinja2
Created a package named django-jinja2-gtm to support Jinja2 templates.
Documentation on installation and usage is found in the README in the GitHub repo.