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PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS VERY OLD ARCHIVE INFORMATION AND MAY NOT FUNCTION ON NEW SERVERS


Simple Hit Counters

Counters, counters everywhere! It seems that the hit counter is just about as ubiquitous as the web itself! Two simple counters, one text and one graphical, are presented in the sections below. The textual counter, was written by Jonathan Lewis. The graphical counter is simply a modification by Scott Pierce of the textual counter.

Installation

To install the counters, connect to your Virtual Server via Telnet or SSH and use the commands below that match your Virtual Server O/S: 

% vinstall counter

Configuration

To configure the counters, do the following.
    Vi's standard input and output must be a terminal.

  1. Configure your Virtual Server web server to recognize server side includes. Do this by creating a file called .htaccess in the same directory where the page with the counter is to reside. The .htaccess File should contain the following lines. 

    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
AddHandler server-parsed .html

    You can either use the pico file editor to create the file on your Virtual Server or you can create it 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).

  2. Initialize your counter with a start value. Do this by creating a file with the same "basename" as your .html file that you plan to put the counter on, but with the extension .count, instead of .html. For example, for a filed called index.html, create a file by the name of index.count. Put this file in the same directory as the index.html file. The .count file will contain just one number: the value from which you want your counter to begin (probably "0").

    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)

Implementation

Now you are ready to implement your new counter. Place the counter server side include in the HTML of the page on which you want to have a counter. In the .html file include something like the following in the main body of HTML. 

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  [an error occurred while processing this directive]  Internet Customers Served.


You have the flexibility of specifying a Graphical Counter Digit Set to be used to display the count if you are using the graphical counter. Refer to the instructions within the counter code itself for more information.

Docmumentation

Each counter is documented within the source code:

For technical documentation of CGI, see:


PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS OLD ARCHIVE INFORMATION AND MAY NOT FUNCTION ON NEW SERVERS