Geo-counter

NOTE:
  
   
  Only University of Alberta users can build new counters.
  I am NOT letting external users build new counters anymore. 
  Try doing a search on "counters" from http://yahoo.com 

     --> Have you seen FAQ 17?

You are visitor number




You can see the last 20 users




You can also see full domain stats and daily statistics

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• Geo-counter Registration & Housekeeping
• See Top 50 Busy Counters
• Show other collections of statistics (updated daily) pages
• Show the available font types, or in order of popularity

Registration:

You don't need to register to use this program, however if you do, I can pick a meaningful name for you. You can perform several additional house-keeping chores, such as resetting the counter, or keep track of the web pages that link to your page. You can also have higher logging limits.

Proceed to Geo-counter Registration & Housekeeping

ON-CAMPUS USERS:

A few companion products exist:
• MailENV is sample code to automatically email you when someone accesses your page.
• Mailer.pl can be used to send mail/comments to a user.
• Geo-guest is a generalized Guestbook/Comment building program for LOCAL pages

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How to use

GENERIC APPROACH:

1. Copy This hunk of html code and (optionally) this one to your html document at an appropriate place.

   
   

2. Change all TWO/THREE occurrences of the string
   yoursite.yourfile
   ... to something meaningful, such as:
   ualberta.fredhome
   
   I want to know the domain name of the machine you do your work from, not necessarily where the html is located.

   
   

3. Fiddle with any wording changes you want

   
   

4. Visit http://www.ualberta.ca/GEO/Counter.html occasionally to watch for updates.

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• &font:

  Several font types can be used as your counter.

    example:    yoursite.yourfile.gif&font:Medium-blue
    

   

   

• &ignore:

  Lets you specify what machines do not get registered when they access the page.

    example:    yoursite.yourfile.gif&ignore:nilwoods.ucs.ualberta.ca
    

  NOTE: "&ignore" will not kick in for the first 10 hits, to allow you to test your counter. After that, your listed domains will be ignored.

   

   

• &n

  Just because I'm suggesting &20 as a good number of visitors to display, doesn't mean that's all this prog will show.
  ... Use any number you want.

    example:    yoursite.yourfile.gif&45
    

  ... will show you the last 45 visitors

  note: &all is a synonym for 99999 here.

  --> Repect your customers' privacy! See this note.

   

   

• &nrno spaces

  Similar to &n, but displays the log in reverse order, so most recent entry is at the top.

    example:    yoursite.yourfile.gif&15r
    

  ... will show you the last 15 visitors, from most recent.

   

   

• &daily

  Will show you a bar chart of the daily hits to your site.

    example:    yoursite.yourfile.gif&daily
    

  ... will show you these daily statistics

   

   

• &full

  Will show you a sub-menu that lets you chose from a variety of reports

    example:    yoursite.yourfile.gif&full
    

  ... will give you a menu of all kinds of stats to choose from, but some of the domain printouts could get to be a VERY long list. Here is an example.

  Two popular reports using this technique are:

  &level3:n

  which will show top n subdomains visiting your page (here is an example)

  &frequent:n

  which will show you the top n frequent visitors to your page (here's an example)

   

   

• Several advanced features and reports are available, should you have a registered counter

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Emptied Revisions (this part), cleaned up unused/forgotten counters.

Cleaned up unused/forgotten counters (not referenced for 30 days).

Feb 12/97:
JAVA trojan capability added for REGISTERED COUNTERS

Added a technique to produce a log of the REFERRING pages. That is, until now, you only knew what machine visited your page. Curious web developers want to know which pages or bookmarks refer to their masterpiece.

I accomplish this using a JAVASCRIPT that catches the referring URL, and logs it into a new Geo-counter database running in conjunction with a standard Geo-counter, so it will only catch/log when a Netscape 3 or MSIE 3 running JAVA hits your page.

REGISTERED USERS will see a new button at the bottom of the "INSPECT" for each registered counter called "Show me the JAVASCRIPT CODE to add the referring log to my page". All you have to do is press that button, and it'll show you the code you need to copy and paste into your web page.

Then, your &full report will give you an option to report those "referring URLS" that have you bookmarked/referenced/directly linked.

As an example, you can see the report produced from my restaurants page

1997 Mar 7:

Added dates and average Kbytes for the http://www.ualberta.ca/htbin/showfonts program. This will let regular users know what new fonts have shown up.

1997 Aug 29:

A Disk drive crash had to be repaired by migrating the counters on the fly to a new volume. This occurred between 2pm and 5pm MST. Some data may be missing from this time period. Sorry about that. Shit happens.

1997 Sep 3:

Ran an expire of counters that had been dormant since July 10, 1997. This is the first expiry run I've made since January. 553 dormant counters removed.

1997 Oct 24:

Netscape's composer, along with other cookie-cutter web page builders have a nasty habit of re-writing script calls to gifs to the end-result of the gif call. That is, what used to be a call to the Geo-counter script has been turned into simply a number.gif, which is static, not dynamic.
They also tend to rewrite the ampersand used in cgi-scripts to separate parameters as "&" -- Idiots.
Rewrite the line to call the Geo-counter script. And Growl at the idiocies of these so-called efficient, intelligent web editors.
See also: FAQ16

1997 Oct 29:

Added a cool new option to the "last nn users" -- a reverse listing.
Add a little r to the end of your number.

Example:

See <a href ="http://www.ualberta.ca/htbin/Geo-counter.gif?yoursite.yourfile.gif&20r"> last 20 users <a>

The &refer report now sorts the sites that refer to your page.

1998 May 20:

Deleted all counters that showed no references since April 10.

I'm running out of disk space, again.

1999 Dec 1:

Moved LOCAL counters to a faster machine - ice.ucs.ualberta.ca
Guest counters stay on dark.ucs.ualberta.ca

2002 Mar 23:

Moved ALL counters to an even faster machine - buzz.srv.ualberta.ca.
This machine is on Gigabit ethernet, and has a HUGE honkin hard drive.
NOTE: with an updated daemon, OS, and gif manipulation package, I've noticed a few counter gifs looked ugly/different (most notably, Medium-white had become completely transparent). If you notice any other strange looking counters, email me.

 

ALSO:

A few people were pointed directly at IP addresses, rather than 'www.ualberta.ca'. (129.128.76.54, 129.128.98.54, 129.128.98.71 and 129.128.76.53 for example) Let the lesson be: "don't point at IP addresses. When you do, you are tied to a machine -- if we ever change a machine, you lose the service. You should NEVER directly address an IP address for a service." Just change your incorrect calls back to "http://www.ualberta.ca/htbin/Geo-counter.gif?etc....." -- the way it should have been.

See also: Older History of Changes

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NOTES:

Restrictions

• University of Alberta pages have COMPLETE PRIORITY, and are exempt from most of these restrictions.
• A maximum of 20 counters are allowed per domain. That means, if someone at your site hogs 20 counters for 20 of his pages, you're out of luck.
  (This restriction encourages each local sysadmin to add a counter facility to their own site)

• After 100 references per day, the users are no longer logged. That is, you ONLY get a counter.
• After 500 references per day, your counter dissappears. Take the reference to Geo-counter off your page.
• No new counters will be registered during the UofA's prime time. (That's 8am-5pm, Edmonton time.)
--> Repect your customers' privacy! See this note.

• This prog ONLY DOES AN APPROXIMATION.
  It sends an inline image back to the user,
  and not all browsers can handle this (like LYNX on gpu).
  Or, if you have image preload off, it won't look here, either.
• The program has very little security. You can step on someone else's counter. Please don't.
• Leave the " See http://www.ualberta.ca/GEO/Counter.html for details. " comment in your file, so that people don't clone your html page, and step on your pointer.
• My desktop machines' names are "nilwoods.ucs.ualberta.ca" and "macedonia.ucs.ualberta.ca", so don't panic if that machine shows up on your logs early after your installation.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q 0: Source Code

Hey, Geo! I would like to install your program on my server. That way, you won't get the load from pages that I'm serving.

I wrote this program back in 1995. I haven't spent too much time since 1996 doing work on it, and my main job now is NOT to write CGI scripts. I'm probably not going to be making major modifications to it, and that means I'm certainly not going to get it to a "release level" that I'd be comfortable in sharing with anyone.. There are several other good counters available on the internet that you can install on your server.

------> The full FAQ list is here

Index of FAQ:
• Q 0 Source Code Availability
• Q 1 Resetting Counters & Listed URL Names
• Q 2 See Q 0
• Q 3 Why not send TEXT rather than a graphic?
• Q 4 Reporting a different time zone
• Q 5 Showing USER'S NAMES in the log
• Q 6 I registered, but still can't control "my counter"
• Q 7 I try at all hours, but I still get the message "You can't register at this time"
• Q 8 I get the error message "This site can't use Geo counter"
• Q 9 I used the &ignore feature, but my domain still shows up
• Q 10 Is yours the only program that can keep track of last N users?
• Q 11 Why do you need a password, and why isn't it blanked out?
• Q 12 I already have a counter in action, but now I want to change it to a registered one
• Q 13 I'm on a dynamic addressing service - can I ignore a range of internet addresses?
• Q 14 I changed my offset to a big number, now my RPD is so high I'm told to remove the counter
• Q 15 I'm registered user, but I don't see any "INSPECT" button
• Q 16 The counter used to work, but now all I see is a broken icon (or a static number)
• Q 17 That really confusing "NO MORE COUNTERS" message

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