EXT:vgwort—Tracking Pixels in TYPO3, the Easy Way

In the first part of this series, we looked at what VG Wort is, why it matters for publishers, and how METIS works. If you missed it, Part 1: VG Wort and TYPO3—What You Need to Know as a Publisher covers everything you need to get started.

Now it’s time for the practical part. You know that VG Wort pays royalties for your online texts, and you know that you need tracking pixels on your pages to get them. The question is how to set this up cleanly in TYPO3, without hacking your templates or pasting tracking codes into your HTML by hand.

The answer is our free, open-source VG Wort extension (vgwort), built to solve exactly this problem.

• Part 1: VG Wort and TYPO3: What You Need to Know as a Publisher
• Part 2: EXT:vgwort: Tracking Pixels in TYPO3, the Easy Way (this post)
• Part 3: VG Wort Pro: Automated Reporting for Professional Publishers

As with all of our extensions, we rely on Composer. One line is all it takes:

composer req b13/vgwort

The extension supports TYPO3 v13 and v14 and requires PHP 8.2 or higher. That covers the current LTS versions most projects run on.

In Composer-based installations, the extension is active as soon as it’s installed. You don’t need to switch it on in the backend.

EXT:vgwort uses TYPO3’s site set concept to integrate cleanly with your site. Add the extension as a dependency in your site set’s config.yaml:

That’s basically it. The extension now renders the tracking pixel automatically, right after the opening <body> tag, but only on pages that actually have a pixel assigned. No pixel assigned means no tracking code in the HTML. Nice and clean.

VG Wort spreads its tracking pixels across several subdomains, from vg01.met.vgwort.de to vg09.met.vgwort.de. You’ll see which one applies to your pixels in T.O.M. when you order them. By default, the extension uses vg08. If your pixels use a different subdomain, change it in your settings.yaml:

In most cases, the automatic integration through the site set is all you need. But if you want more control over where the pixel goes, for example because your template setup is unusual, you can render it yourself with a Fluid partial:

In our experience, very few projects need this. Still, it’s good to know the option is there.

For editors, the usual workflow barely changes. The extension adds a new VG Wort tab to the page properties with two fields:

Tracking pixel code (tx_vgwort_pixel): This is where you enter the tracking pixel’s public ID. You get it when you order tracking pixels in T.O.M. Each pixel comes with a public and a private code, and the public one goes here.

Ignore page (tx_vgwort_ignore): A checkbox that explicitly excludes a page from VG Wort tracking. This comes in handy for pages that have editorial content but shouldn’t be reported for some reason, like landing pages with little original text or pages that consist mostly of third-party content.

The workflow couldn’t be simpler: open the page properties, switch to the VG Wort tab, paste the pixel code, and save. Done. The next time the page loads, the tracking pixel appears in its HTML automatically.

When you manage a lot of pages, it’s easy to lose track. Which pages already have a pixel? Which ones don’t? Did an important page slip through the cracks?

EXT:vgwort adds a VG Wort overview to TYPO3’s Info module (Web > Info). There, you can see at a glance which pages have a pixel assigned, which ones are explicitly ignored, and which ones are still missing a pixel. That makes quality control much easier, especially when several editors work on the same site.

By default, the extension only shows the VG Wort fields on standard pages (doktype 1). If you use custom page types, such as blog articles, news detail pages, or other special doktypes, you can easily register them:

One important note: your site package needs to declare b13/vgwort as a Composer dependency so the configuration loads at the right time. That’s standard TYPO3 practice, but I’m mentioning it anyway because we’ve seen projects trip over it.

The VG Wort tracking pixel is a tracking mechanism, even though it doesn’t set cookies or collect personal data in the traditional sense. You still shouldn’t ignore the topic. In our experience, it’s a good idea to mention the tracking pixel openly in your privacy policy. VG Wort provides sample wording you can add to your privacy page. If in doubt, talk to your data protection officer. On larger projects especially, it’s a step worth taking.

I’ll be honest: EXT:vgwort is intentionally simple. It’s a single-purpose extension that does one thing well, which is adding tracking pixels to TYPO3 pages.

The free version is the right fit if:

• You run a smaller blog or a website with a manageable number of pages.
• Your editors can copy pixels from T.O.M. by hand and assign them to individual pages.
• You submit your annual report to VG Wort yourself in T.O.M.
• You don’t need automatic syncing between TYPO3 and VG Wort.

For a blog with 20, 50, or even 100 articles, that’s all you need. You order tracking pixels in T.O.M., assign them in the TYPO3 backend, and report your texts in the portal yourself at the end of the year.

As your page count grows, so does the manual work. That’s where the free version hits its limits:

• No pixel pool management: You copy each pixel from T.O.M. and paste it into TYPO3 one at a time. With 500 articles, that gets tedious.
• No author assignment: VG Wort requires every reported text to be assigned to an author. In the free version, that happens entirely outside TYPO3.
• No automatic text reporting: You register your texts with VG Wort yourself, including title, author, URL, and character count, either directly in T.O.M. or via CSV upload.
• No API connection: There’s no link between TYPO3 and VG Wort’s METIS interface.

For publishers with hundreds or thousands of articles, multiple authors, and a need for a fully automated workflow, this isn’t sustainable in the long run. That’s exactly why we built VG Wort Pro. More on that in the third and final part of this series.

In the next post, I’ll show you how VG Wort Pro automates the entire process: from a pixel pool that fills itself straight from the API, to managing authors in TYPO3, to reporting texts to VG Wort automatically. And if you start with the free version today and need more later, upgrading is seamless.