What is a Web counter?

Web counters allow you to measure and display the number of times your home page has been accessed.

How do I install it?

Insert the following line into the HTML of your page:

<img src="http://www.btinternet.com/cgi-bin/counter/~yourname">

where yourname is the e-mail name used to create your Web page. This will show a basic counter using the default digit set and displaying 6 digits.

The value of the counter is stored in your home page directory. This file, called the value file, is called counter.data# where # is a value from 1 to 5. You can examine it without incrementing the counter by looking at:

http://www.btinternet.com/~yourname/counter.data1

Because the counter data in stored in your home page directory, it can also be accessed via FTP. You can download the counter value file and examine it. Additionally, you can modify the value file to set its count at a specific value and then upload the file.

What options are available?

You can control how many digits are displayed by adding a length parameter:

<img src="http://www.btinternet.com/cgi-bin/counter/~yourname?length=4">

You can have different counters to measure the number of accesses to different parts of your Website. There can be a maximum of five counters associated with your home page. The default is counter 1. The other four can be accessed by adding the counter parameter to the URL:

<img src="http://www.btinternet.com/cgi-bin/counter/~yourname?counter=2">

If counter 2 is to be limited to three digits, the two parameters are separated with a + :

<img src="http://www.btinternet.com/cgi-bin/counter/~yourname?counter=2+length=3">

How do I reset the Web counter?

The counter can be reset by deleting the value file. The next time that counter is activated the file will be created automatically and reset to 0.

Can I use my own graphics for the numbers?

Yes. If the counter program finds a directory called digits within your home page directory, it will use the GIF files in this area. These files must be named 0.gif to 9.gif.