Anyone who runs a multi-author site knows that tracking of all the articles is a constant challenge. Keeping tabs on who is writing what is hard enough, but then trying to follow who is getting the job done is another thing altogether. Whether you want to track word counts, reads, comments, etc., there just isn't a good way to break things down by author. So here's what I'm looking for: a plugin that allows me to track a few very simple metrics, broken down by author. Specifically I'd like to know:

• number of articles posted over a given period
• average articles per day
• comments (total and average per article)
• pageviews (total over a time period, per article)
• some other ideas, though less important ones, could be: average word count per article, what categories are being written in, etc.

Basically it would just be a simple way to track who is writing and how successful their posts are. It wouldn't have to be a comprehensive package, just some insight into the performance of each of the authors. The hardest one of these would be tracking pageviews, but a rough estimate would be fine. Are their ways around a custom plugin? Possibly, but nothing great (at least that I can think of). You could possibly use Google Analytics for this, but you would have to have a unique code for each of the authors in the URL (or URI, whatever you want to call it). This requires some customization and adds to the length of your URL stucture, but could possibly be OK. The downside is that you are stuck using an analytics package that won't be able to track comments, calculate post totals, or other site specific metrics. From what I can tell, it really has to be done within Wordpress to be done well. All the data is readily available (if you know how to get it) so then it's just a matter of calculating the totals and presenting them in a friendly manner. Part of the challenge would be creating a slick UI and also not having the plugin be a resource hog (maybe it could update only once an hour or once on a day). Based on plugins like Wassup we know it's possible to do fairly extensive analytics packages within Wordpress. Any takers? Anyone know of a plugin that I haven't found? An easier way to get these results? I don't think its asking for a whole lot (and I'm surprised that it hasn't been done yet).