I wonder how many people have looked at my page?

While it is possible to figure out the number of hits your page is getting from other sources, such as the log, there is still definitely an attraction to letting everyone else know too. And so we have a bit of electronic americana, the counter. It lets you, and everyone else, know that hundreds or even thousands of persons have looked at your work.

We have placed a counter on the system that may be used by any CityNet subscriber. It is pretty easy to set up, but it does require that CityNet do something to set up each counter. And so you need to let us know that you want to set up a counter (or more than one counter) before things will work. At the bottom of this page you will find a short form that will make it even easier to let us know. After you complete and submit it, we will process your request over the next day (or two!) and then your counter will be active. Please don't go counter happy! We think one is plenty.

The Counter

The counter that we have chosen to install is called, get ready for this, Count Version 2.0! The authors are Muhammad A. Muquit and Kevin J. Walsh. Be sure to check out the Count URL listed above for very comprehensive documentation. Some of our favorite features of the counter include:

Use of GIF images for the generated count. There are currently four or five "styles" to choose from. We will be adding more in the future.

No need for Server Side Includes. This is a function that we don't allow at CityNet for security reasons. So it was important we find a solution that did not require SSI.

It's a clock too!

Options, options, and more options.

Setting up the Counter

Step One: Request Counter File

We will need to create a file that will hold the count for your page. To make things simple, we would like to name these files after the subscriber that will be using the counter. For example, if your Username is "douglas" and you want to have two pages with counters on them, we could name the files "douglas1.dat" and "douglas2.dat". At the bottom of this page you will a form that will help you get this file created.

Step Two: Call the Counter from your HTML Document

You need to place a line like the the following inside your html document:

<img src="http://www.city-net.com/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df= CounterFile.dat&md=5&dd=Z&ft=0">

Note that the above is an example. There are two thing that you will need to change. First, you don't have to break it up like it is here. In fact, you may need to keep the whole statement on one line. Second, take a look at the statement:

"df=CounterFile.dat"

This parameter tells the counter where your count is. This is something that we will give you after you have made your request for a Counter File. Looking at our example again, this could be either:

"df=douglas1.dat"

"df=douglas2.dat"

Remember that you will substitute your own name here though! You will also notice that there are some additional paramters. For instance:

dd=Z

This instructs the counter to use the gif images from "Z" to make the counter. I created the images held here. If you were to use "Z", your counter would look something like this:

You can use other gif images that came with the counter by substituting for Z. Here are some other possibilities:

dd=A

dd=B

dd=C

dd=D

dd=E

The other paramters included in the above example are "md=5", which tells the counter you want five positions and "ft=0", which tells the counter you want to have the leading zeros show.

Remember, the counter is only for the use of CityNet subscribers!

Please let us know if you feel that you are a victim of "Counter Terrorism!" This occurs when someone else on the net decides to start using your counter. There are a few things in the counter that try to make this more difficult, but it is possible. So if you all of the sudden are getting thousands of hits, let us know and we can check this against the log.

Counter Request