Simple Visitor Counters

Note: You do not have to use a counter to track your web site's visitors. Your server logs keep an accurate record of your site visitors. To learn more about server logs, check out our special help section on site statistics.

% cd
% vinstall counter

1. Configure your Virtual Server to recognize server side includes. Create a file called .htaccess in the same directory where the HTML with the server side include is to reside. The .htaccess file should look like:
   
   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
   AddType text/x-server-parsed-html .html
   
   You can either use Pico to create the file on your Virtual Server or you can create it locally on your own PC (in TextPad, for example) and then use a FTP client to upload it to your Virtual Server (in ASCII mode). Either way will work.
   
   
2. Initialize your counter with a start value. This start value allows you to start a counter at a higher number than zero so that it appears many more visitors have come to your site.
   
   To do this, create a file with the same "basename" as your .html file that you plan to put the counter on, but with the extension .count, rather than .html. For example, for index.html, you would create a file by the name of index.count. Put this file in the same directory as index.html.
   
   You can create the .count file locally on your own PC (using "notepad", for example) and then use an FTP client to upload it to your Virtual Server (in ASCII mode). Or you can do this while connected to your Virtual Server by doing the following:
   
   
   % cat > index.count 0 ^D (the control-D character)

(textual counter)


<!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/library/counter/c4.pl"-->

(graphical counter)


<!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/library/counter/c4g.pl"--> 

Reload your web page and see if it works. Once you have completed the installation successfully, you will have a working counter like the one shown below.

Over    Internet Customers Served.

http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/