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[Ingrid]

I bet someone here knows what happened to my website counter, which recently plunged suddenly by thousands of hits.  My webmaster is stumped and sounds a bit disbelieving whyen I tell him where my count was 3 days ago and where it is now.  He has no way of fixing it, so we are eliminating the counter altogether.  A pity because I enjoyed seeing all the new hits every day.

Any answers?

Ingrid

[Janet Koch]

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of computers....

Janet

[Ingrid]

Hmm!  That doesn't sound very technical, Janet.  I'm inclined to doubt that a malicious gnome is at work.

[B L McAllister]

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of computers....

Janet

The shadow knows, hmm-mhm-mmh-hah.  Or so I've heard.  Unfortunately he and whichever god is referred to in the expression "God only knows" are both silent on the subject of computers, the internet, and all that, although if you'll contact several experts, I imagine you can easily get several opinions, possibly even so many that some two are compatible.

[Ingrid]

Sigh.  I don't think I'm going to get any advice how to fix this.  Once the counter is gone, there's no point in starting over from scratch.  I'm going to miss it.

Ingrid

[Janet Koch]

Sigh.  I don't think I'm going to get any advice how to fix this.

Not from me, anyway. If you had a problem with AutoCAD I might be able to help, but the mysteries of the Internet are waaay beyond my capabilities.

Sorry!

Janet

[krisneri]

Ingrid, I have no idea how to explain this -- my guess is that the counter is malfunctioning. You know there are loads of different counters out there? Your web person can simply install another one. Many are free. But hits is really a meaningless concept. If a person does a web search and simply clicks through lots of the choices that come up, spending seconds on each choice before determining it's not what he needs -- that's a hit. So the hits should be high, but lots of hits aren't worth much. About all you can hope for with the quickie hits is that something on your homepage interests that person enough to stay and browse. It's the unique visitors that matter, and well as the number of pages they visit. However, if your counter isn't getting hits right, it may not be counting visitors correctly either.

Kris

[Ingrid]

Thanks, Kris.  That makes some sense to me.  Hits for me are generally related to a review coming out, or a new book hitting the shelves, so I do consider them somewhat helpful.  Of course, a low hit count is no encouragement to visitors, so we'll have to remove it.  I'm not about to start over from "1".  Bloggers tend to make much of their hits, though surely some of theirs are also accidental.  My counter also never registered a visitor more than for the first time, and some counters count every visit.  The latter is much better for writers who work on a series.  My webmaster doesn't seem to know how to get that kind.  Arrgh!

Ingrid

[dhparker]

Ingrid, the one I use on my website shows both new and return visitors, so I can see which is which.  Point your webmaster to this site:  http://www.statcounter.com/services.html  You can also see where the hits come from, what pages each visits and for how long.  I use the free version.  It's not perfect, I'm sure, but I enjoy seeing who's been visiting.  You can use the invisible mode, by the way, so other people can't see how many hits you've had.

Donna

[krisneri]

Actually, you probably don't even need a counter. Ask your web person how to access your web stats. Most web hosts have some page where you can view your stats, including visitors, hits, etc. I have one web host for my web site and the stores, and we have stats with that. And I have another web host for our virtual store, and we have a different program for our stats there. But I can get the same useful information from both. Most hosts have some way of collecting stats. Your web person should be able to give you a link and sign-on for it.

Kris

[Daniel Hatadi]

Ingrid, I'm guessing whoever hosts your webpages had some kind of corruption occur on the database file of the counter. I doubt this was anything malicious.

That being said, I'll second the vote on statcounter. The free version keeps track of the last 100 hits and I don't think there's much of a need to pay for the full version, seeing as it keeps totals. And these are of either page hits or unique visitors, which makes more sense to me. You can also view stats on where people have come from and what country they're in. This shows up on a world map which is very nifty indeed.

And there's no need to start from zero. When you set the counter up it gives you the option to start from a particular number (as should any counter).

It's pretty easy to sign up and create a counter, which then gives you html code to paste into every one of your pages.

[Ingrid]

Thanks all!  Fantastically helpful!  My faith in humanity has just skyrocketed!

Now to tackle my webmaster -- who's been a tad sludgy on this issue -- maybe because he's off to ccept some sort of web deesign reward someplace.

Ingrid

[Ingrid]

Ah, Daniel, the statcounter was perfect, but my webmaster says it's not compatible with the server.  He may be able to fiddle around with it, but I'm beginning to worry about not having a counter at all.  Maybe I need a new server.

Ingrid