How to Enable and Read Video Analytics
WP Media Player records every view, play, pause, seek, and completion for every video in your library. The data lives in your own WordPress database — no external service, no third-party tracking pixel. Turn it on in Settings, then read the results on the Dashboard.
Enable Analytics
Go to WP Media Player > Settings > Analytics. Toggle Enable Analytics on. This starts recording events for every player on the site immediately — no further configuration is required.
Beneath the toggle, turn on Auto Cleanup to keep the events table from growing indefinitely. Auto Cleanup deletes events older than the number of days you set in the Retention Days field. The default is 30 days; you can set any value from 1 to 365.
Analytics are off by default. Nothing is recorded until you toggle this switch on.
Read the Dashboard
Open WP Media Player > Dashboard to see the four stat tiles at the top of the page:
- Total Views: Every time a player has loaded on a page
- Total Plays: Every time playback actually started
- Media Items: The number of distinct videos in your library
- Total Events: The combined count of all tracked interactions
These tiles update via the WordPress heartbeat. If analytics are disabled, a yellow banner appears at the top of the dashboard with a link back to the Analytics settings tab.
What Pro Adds
The free tier covers the four dashboard tiles and the raw event log. Pro adds:
- Watch time tracking: Total and average minutes watched per video
- Engagement metrics: How far viewers progress through each video
- Geographic data: Which countries and regions your viewers come from
- Device and browser stats: Desktop, mobile, tablet, and browser breakdown
- Custom date ranges: Pick any start and end date for the analytics view
- Real-time monitoring: Live view of who is watching right now
Events That Are Tracked
Every player interaction generates an event. The tracked types are:
- view: The player loaded on a page
- play: Playback started
- pause: Playback paused
- seek: The viewer dragged the progress bar
- progress: Periodic progress updates during playback
- ended / complete: Playback reached the end of the video
Events are stored in the {prefix}ccpwpmp_events table in your WordPress database. The auto-cleanup cron job runs daily to prune old rows when that setting is enabled.
What to Check
- Analytics are enabled and the Dashboard shows non-zero view and play counts within a few hours of traffic
- Auto Cleanup is turned on with a retention window that matches your reporting needs
- The events table in your database is growing at a rate proportional to your site traffic
Next Steps
Analytics tell you what is happening. To understand where your viewers come from and how they discover your videos, see how to connect Google Analytics to forward player events to your own GA measurement ID.