OneCraft Block Insights measures pages built with the WordPress block editor, one
block at a time: how far down the page each reader gets, how long each block
holds them, and where they click. It names the block your readers stop at.
What it cannot measure. Read this first.
Only content built with the block editor is measured. Pages built with a
page builder — Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Oxygen, Bricks, Beaver Builder —
store their layout outside of blocks, so there is nothing for this plugin to
attach to. Those pages produce no numbers at all. After activation the
plugin scans your content and tells you exactly how many of your pages it
can and cannot measure, naming the builder it found.
This is also not a site-wide analytics plugin. There are no visitor totals,
no sessions, no traffic sources, no unique visitors. It answers one
question: within a page, which block do readers stop at.
It writes an identifier into your content.
Telling one block apart from another, across edits, needs a name that
survives the edit. So the first time you edit and save a page, the plugin
adds a short ID to each block's comment delimiter in the post content.
Nothing visible changes, and the front end is unaffected.
Taking the plugin out takes them with it. Deleting the plugin restores post
content to the exact bytes it had before the IDs were added, and
wp block-insights strip does the same without uninstalling. Any post whose
content would not survive that round trip is left completely untouched and
reported to you, never rewritten.
What it measures
- Reach — how far down the page readers actually get, block by block
- Dwell — how long each block stays on screen
- Clicks — where readers click, attributed to the block they clicked in
A block counts as reached once enough of it is genuinely on screen: half the
block, or half the screen for a block taller than the screen. Dwell accrues
only while that holds, and stops when the reader switches tabs.
About the numbers
Measurement happens in the reader's browser, so the figures are directional
rather than audited. Page views here will always be lower than your server
logs: content blockers, unusual browsers, crashed tabs and phones killing a
background app all cost measurements. Use these numbers to compare sections
within a page, not as a system of record.
Ratios survive this better than totals do. A block's reach and the page view
it is divided by come from the same single beacon, so a lost visit removes
both at once and the percentage stays honest.
One more caution: reached is not read. A reader who scrolls past a block in
200 milliseconds still counts as having reached it. That is what the dwell
figure is for.
Privacy
Measurement is cookieless and first-party. No cookies are set, no browser
storage is used, no visitor identifier of any kind is created, and unique
visitors are not counted. No IP addresses, page URLs, referrers, user agents
or personal data are stored.
What visitors do is written to your own WordPress database and read back
from it. There is no analytics service, no third-party script, no remote
API, no phone-home and no telemetry. Nothing about your readers leaves your
server.
Because no personal data is collected, no consent banner is required for
this plugin, and it adds nothing to personal data exports or erasure
requests.
Where to find it
- Block Insights → Reports — every measured page, worst drop-off first.
Open one for a block-by-block breakdown in document order, so the reach
percentages form a curve running down the page. The step where that curve
falls is the block readers stop at.
- Block Insights → Settings — which post types are measured, with the
daily row cost of each choice shown before you commit, plus the coverage
report of what can and cannot be measured.
- Block Insights → Manual — what the numbers mean, where they come from,
and how far to trust them.
- The post editor — open a page, then the ⋮ menu → Block Insights for
that page's numbers next to the blocks themselves.
Storage
Storage does not grow with traffic. One row covers one block, on one day, on
one device type, however many readers it had. Rows grow with pages times
blocks times days.
Old data is never deleted. Once the daily table reaches its row budget, the
oldest days are folded into monthly totals, so disk usage stays predictable
no matter how large the site is. Reports that reach back past that point
print the date day-level detail begins on, so a shrinking figure is never
silent.
By default only posts and pages are measured. Other public post types can be
enabled in Settings.
Block Insights does not support WordPress Multisite.
The Pro version
The free version has no page limit, no page-view limit and no expiry.
Pro adds three things: the before-and-after comparison, which splits a
page's numbers at the day you edited it; the client report, a printable
document with your own letterhead; and a CSV export.
Your edits are recorded by the free version from the day you install it. If
you upgrade later, the comparison covers that whole history rather than
beginning on the day you paid.
External services
The free version talks to no external service on its own. It ships the
Freemius SDK, which powers licence activation and updates for Pro. On first
activation Freemius asks whether you want to share basic site data; the
question is skippable, and if you skip it nothing is sent.
Data leaves your site in two cases: if you accept that opt-in, and if you
activate a Pro licence key. What is sent then is your site's homepage URL,
the plugin version and the SDK version — the minimum needed to enforce a
per-site licence and deliver updates. The optional extras the SDK can send,
your list of installed plugins and themes and your WordPress/PHP environment
report, are switched off by default in this plugin. No visitor data, and
nothing from the statistics tables, is ever included.
Freemius terms:
https://freemius.com/terms/
Freemius privacy policy:
https://freemius.com/privacy/
- Install and activate the plugin.
- Open Block Insights → Settings and read the coverage report. It tells
you how many of your pages can be measured before you invest any time.
- Open a page in the block editor, make an actual change, and update.
Step 3 is required, and it is the step people miss. Block identifiers are
added in the editor as you work; existing content is never rewritten in
bulk, because that would touch every post on the site to solve a problem you
may not have. A post that has never been opened and saved in the editor
since activation is never measured. Opening it is not enough — the editor
has to consider the post edited. A space added and removed again counts.
Numbers then appear once someone has visited the published page. Your own
visits are not counted while you are logged in and able to edit that page.