Counter on Ohio

[neumannu47]

I just added a counter to a web page using the script on Ohio. Every time I hit refresh, it increments. The only other counter I used on another server had an option to count unique visits only. I don't see this option on the setup for this counter. Is it available, or is it possible to add another counter that will? How?

[TechWeasel]

I don't think there are any "visitor counter" options through cPanel - there are 100s of options to add visitor counter either through 3rd party on-line services or through adding scripts to your page.

I know of a couple PHP scripts that do what you want but I know there are CGI and SSI scripts that do the same thing. www.hotscripts.com is the best place to look... although I don't know if you want to change your site to php or shtml just to implement a counter script!

- B

[stratplan]

you might take a look at:

free hit counter

(I am not affiliated with them in any way)

Or do a google with what you need.

Dick

[midwest]

The counter used by the cpanel does not seem to have any type of IP control. Looks like it would be better to only use it for date/time display.

Look at VIP counter, use the download link, the site has disappeared.
http://www.cgiarchives.com/counters_2.html

Ascad also has a nice counter
http://www.ascadnetworks.com/cgi/gc.shtml

[TechWeasel]

It's funny you should mention www.statcounter.com Strat... I found them after doing a quick Google search and have been *blown away* by what I've seen (I, like most, remember third party counter/source solutions to be poor quality, shady hacks that force adversiting on you).

(Incidentally neumannu47 the sites free service is perfect for what you are looking for, as you can specify either a visitor or hit counter with a wide range of nice clean counters with customizable colours).

But far more interesting than the (robust) counter solutions is the amazing detailed user analysis and summaries that Statcounter does on your visitors. They have an excellent geo-targetting databank that they cross reference with your logs so you can view your visitors by country (often down to what *city* they're in) as well as the exact path through your site they take... (ie: A user from Manchester England followed an external link to this page, then went to this page, then went to this page).

This is all intigrated with summaries by country, by browser, by os, even what screen resolution they are using. The drill down is not quite fully implemented yet, but what has been is quite brilliant and allows you to make some very intuative leaps about your users.

They also seems to support W3C and xhtml complient versions of their tracking code which is very welcome.

Anyway, I only set up with them this morning - but it seems (in my limited experience so far) to be a very quality product that has made me *far* more excited about my stats than I normally am. Depending on how this test rolls out I'll be adding all my sites (did I mention multiple sites and users under one account?) I will gladly pay for their "extended" service (allows a greater visitor cache, free service logs the past 100 visitors) given the quality of the product I've seen so far.

Certainly made my morning, now I'm going back to refreshing my logs every five seconds </gush>

[neumannu47]

Originally posted by TechWeasel
(Incidentally neumannu47 the sites free service is perfect for what you are looking for, as you can specify either a visitor or hit counter with a wide range of nice clean counters with customizable colours).

Doesn't the counter remain on their site and is called from the site using it? Remember, I know nothing about CGI, etc!

[TechWeasel]

Basically you sign up, select from a a dozen options or so, and click a button that generates a block of JavaScript code.

You insert that block of code onto any page on your site (or all the pages of your site) and when you next look at the page: voila! Counters.

Yes the counter is actually served from their site, but they have many optimized servers doing nothing but so their response time should be nearly identical to your site. Plus (as I mentioned) the stats analysis they do on visitors to your site (which information they can get when the users browser requests the counter graphic) is really interesting.

It'd take 5 minutes to set up and however long it takes to add the code snippet to your page(s).
No script / CGI / PHP / anything experience needed. Answer a couple of questions and cut and paste. Easy.