counters
by Workshop, 8 July 1998what are counters?
Have you ever been surfing the web, and come across a page that has a little picture that looks like an odometer (mileage counter) and says "Page accessed xxx times since...". This example highlights a page that is using a counter.
This page has been accessed
times since 3rd March 1998.A counter is a program that generates an image or a number displaying the number of times the page has been visited by people on the Internet.
to use, or not to use?
It is a crowded net out there, and some people may pass judgment on the content of your site simply by the number of visits indicated by your counter. Obviously this is good if you receive a great deal of hits, but it is bad if you do not receive that many. To use a web counter is your call, and only you can decide based on the aims of your site and the traffic you currently receive.
how to use a counter?
There are quite a few places on the Internet that offer you web counters for your web pages. There are some counter services that offer you more in-depth web site statistics, but also require you to pay for the service. There are a few places that offer free counters but require you to display a small advertisement for the service. An example of this is FastCounter. When using a counter you will generally use the IMG tag and use a special URL as the image location.
Here is an example of the FastCounter Free web counter...
We have selected a few free web counting services below to get you "counting"...
If you have access to a web server, or your ISP will allow you to run a CGI Counter (you would have to contact them and ask them about this), you can create and run your own counter and do away with the advertisements that the free counters ask you to display.
We are running Yet Another Access Counter on our web server as an example. Click the reload button on the browser to see the counter increment (if you do not see the counter update, it is because of the cache in your browser. The counter is incremented though!).
Other "Do It Yourself" counters are listed below...
DigitMania