Category:Goodies:counters

All Dreamhost site hosting plans give you access to our free counter script, which allows you to place a counter on your pages (even those on non-CGI enabled plans!). All you need to do is create a link to the counter script, specifying a location to a data file which stores your count.

The counter script automatically creates a new data file if you link to it, with the count starting at 0 (see below if you'd like to change the starting number).

Copy the following image tag HTML into your page for a quick and easy counter. Remember to change the data file from 'username-countername.dat' to your own name. Optionally, you can specify the counter style (as shown below) as well. Just add the indicated paramaters to the URL below.

<img src='http://counter.dreamhost.com/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df=username-countername.dat&pad=F&ft=0&dd=XX&istrip=XX'>

You can also set the counter to any number you'd like, but only the FIRST TIME the counter is activated.

Just add the following command:

&st=####

where ### is the number you want the counter to start at.

The full tag would look like this:

<img src="http://counter.dreamhost.com/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df=username-countername.dat&st=####&pad=F&ft=0&dd=XX&istrip=XX">

You use this the FIRST TIME you load the page with the counter on it, after that you should remove the &st=#### from your HTML.

Note that the counter doesn't update when the same person looks at it twice in a row, so don't be surprised if it stays the same number even as you reload it. This is to prevent people from artificially inflating your count.