Vol. 1, No. 16
Counters, Guestbooks, and Stats

We've touched before on the uncontrollable urge of most site builders to know exactly who's visiting their sites, when, and what they're doing there. Forms have the advantage of allowing you to collect detailed answers to the questions you put before your site's visitors. Unfortunately, they only provide you with information about those users who take the time to fill them out. Thus, when you collate the results of your Web forms, you might understandably come to the conclusion that everyone who visits your site is quite patient and enjoys as a hobby the laborious filling out of forms.

Web-page counters, on the other hand, will tally every visitor, even those impatient types who drop in, glance at your index page, and then dash off for an urgent peek at the latest Pamela Anderson shrine. Counters are extremely easy to implement, unlike such tedious techniques as forms and cookies. You can track visits to particular pages, or to your entire site. A simple counter can be implemented on a Tripod page with a single line of code:

<IMG SRC="/bin/counter/mypage.html?FF0000">

The text that appears around this code is up to you. The digit that will ultimately be displayed in the counter image reveals the number of hits received since the counter's addition. Note that it only represents the number of visits to the page that is specified after the word "counter" in the code, not to your entire site. In the example above, it will display the number of hits to mypage.html. With this coding, you can display stats for a page on any other page, if you so desire. The number following the question mark is optional, and represents the color of the counter. The "FF0000" in the code calls for the counter numbers to appear in bright red. (If you don't include the number, be sure to leave off the question mark as well.)

Stats

A more detailed analysis of your traffic is also available through Nedstat. With this tool, visits are automatically charted for you in a variety of ways. You can track how many people visited each day, which days or hours saw the most and least hits, where visitors came from, and how your visitors are distributed, in terms of both physical geography and IP address. The Nedstat registration page will provide you with the exact code you'll need to put on your page, but it more or less looks like this:

<A HREF="http://nedstat.tripod.com/bin/viewstat?name=myname-1"><IMG SRC="http://nedstat.tripod.com/bin/nedstat.gif?name=myname-1" BORDER=0 ALT="Nedstat Counter" WIDTH=22 HEIGHT=22></A>

You adept code wranglers will no doubt recognize that this code produces the following linked image on your page:

Any visitor who clicks on that Nedstat logo (including your fine self) is taken to a stats page for your site. The block of code needs to appear on every page for which you want to track statistics.

Guestbooks

Okay, now you've got a swell, accurate-to-a-T head count of your site's visitors. But who knows what they think of your work? Perhaps that recent rise in hits is due to a link from one of those "Worst-of-the-Web" sites! One way to prevent that dark scenario is to provide your visitors with a guestbook. This way, if they're shocked and/or appalled by what they see, you'll be the first to know. Tripod members can receive free guestbook services from htmlGEAR. Just register, select a name and password, and answer a few questions about your site. You'll receive a dozen or so lines of code to paste into your page's code. Then upload, and you're ready to collect visitor comments!

The code will display two links on your page, as well as the htmlGEAR logo. One of the links, "Sign My Guestbook," allows visitors to add their own entries to your guestbook, including their name, location, and comments. The other link, "View My Guestbook," allows them to read the gems that past visitors have left. Customize the look and behavior of your guestbook by barring select visitors, automatically e-mailing replies, editing the entries people have posted, and viewing statistics about who has posted.

HINTS, POINTERS, and TIPS o' the TRADE

Perhaps you don't want your visitors to see just how many (or how pathetically few, as the case may be) hits you've gotten. In that case, use a simple counter, put the code on a page known only to you, and point it to the page(s) you're interested in. This trick, alas, won't work with Nedstat, that paragon of democracy.

If the new counter you've installed reveals the dreaded truth — nobody's visiting your site! — check out our guide to Promoting Your Site.

Tripod is testing a feature that allows you to put your own CGI scripts on your site, freeing you up to do whatever you want, including creating your own guestbooks and page counters. Check it out!

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RESOURCES:

Tripod Homepage-Building Help: Guestbook

Handcrafted Archive