Counter.exe comes with a companion CGI which will list all available fonts on the server and help you build your own counter. Try it on this server.
The value of the counter is allways printed within a rectangle. This rectangle has the same value as the size of the bitmap being used minus the border value:
rectangle left = border value
rectangle top = border value
rectangle right = bitmap width - border value
rectangle bottom = bitmap height - border value
To create a counter which looks as having a transparent background and no border, create a bitmap big enough for the counter value to appear and set the bgcolor tag to the same value as the page background. Then simply set the border value to 0. See the example above.
Hidding the counter:
You can hide the counter from visitors. No one wants to see a counter displaying 1 or 2. Instead of starting the count at a fictitious number set the Border to 0, the TextColor and the BgColor to the same color as the page background and the counter will not be visible. The stats will still be available.
Hidding the counter Part II:
Set the Face tag to use a symbol font and instead of digits your counter will display small symbols making it somewhat decoratif and hidding the actual count from visitors.
Setting the count:
Counter.exe stores the counts for the different pages in a text file called counter.txt in your CGI directory:
page1=101
page2=93
page3=97
To reset the different counts simply edit the file and place it back in your CGI directory. To reset all counters to 0 just delete the file, counter.exe will re-create it and restart all counts from 0.
Log file:
Counter.exe's log file is a small foot print text file. While servers usually create those monstruous log files counter.log
writes at most 30 bytes (characters) per page viewed plus the page name.
980627140714;1041;12.68.177.70;
980627140729;1062;12.68.177.70;
980627140820;1051;12.68.177.70;
980627141010;1071;12.68.177.70;
980627141130;1045;12.68.177.70;
Use small key names or numbers to use the page tag. By following those rules your counter.log file will hold 25,000 entries (page viewed) per Meg in comparison a server log with 25,000 page viewed could possibly reach over 100 megs.
Page Reference file:
To display the stats viewcount.exe looks into the pagerefs.txt file to replace the values found in the log file:
1051=/games/battle.htm
1052=/web/startpage.htm
1054=/utilities/bmptogif.htm
1055=/utilities/bmptogifpro.htm
Using this technique the size of the log file is greatly reduced.
