Minicounter_XH

Minicounter_XH facilitates counting the visitors of your website. It’s a very minimalistic counter, that will only count the total number of visitors, but this could be implemented in a very efficient manner by storing the required information in a session cookie.

Table of Contents

Requirements

Minicounter_XH is a plugin for CMSimple_XH ≥ 1.6.3. It requires PHP ≥ 5.5.0.

Download

The lastest release is available for download on Github.

Installation

The installation is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins. See the CMSimple_XH wiki for further details.

  1. Backup the data on your server.
  2. Unzip the distribution on your computer.
  3. Upload the whole directory minicounter/ to your server into CMSimple_XH’s plugins/ directory.
  4. Set write permissions to the subdirectories config/ and languages/.
  5. Browse to PluginsMinicounter in the back-end to check if all requirements are fulfilled.

Settings

The plugin’s configuration is done as with many other CMSimple_XH plugins in the website’s administration area. Select PluginsMinicounter.

You can change the default settings of Minicounter_XH under Config. Hints for the options will be displayed when hovering over the help icon with your mouse.

Localization is done under Language. You can translate the character strings to your own language if there is no appropriate language file available, or customize them according to your needs.

Usage

To display the counter on your website insert on a CMSimple page:

{{{minicounter()}}}

or in the template:

<?=minicounter()?>

You can change the displayed text in the plugin administration under Language. Please note the text was chosen this way, because Minicounter_XH doesn’t display the actual visitor count, but insteads keeps a fixed number for each visitor. You can see the effect, if you access your site with two different browsers.

Visits in admin mode (including login and logout) are not counted. Furthermore it’s possible to exclude IP addresses completely in the configuration.

There’s no setting how long a visitor may be inactive and still be counted as the same visitor. All that happens transparently through the use of session cookies. As long as the session is active, the visitor will be regarded the same. The session ends when the browser is closed.

Limitations

The usage of visitor trackers may be restricted or even prohibited by laws for privacy concerns. You can configure Minicounter_XH to honor the DNT (Do Not Track) flag, what might be sufficient. If in doubt, consult a lawyer.

Minicounter_XH is not accurate! In fact it is not possible to accurately count visitors on a website at all. That stems from the fact that in general it’s impossible to identify visitors reliably. From request to request their IP addresses may change, or multiple visitors may use the same IP address if they sit behind a proxy for instance, and over time IPv4 addresses will change anyway. Other techniques such as browser fingerprinting and tracking images are not 100% reliable either. The session cookie based approach used by Minicounter_XH is most likely even more inaccurate, as it will work only if the session cookie is accepted by the visitor.

Troubleshooting

Report bugs and ask for support either on Github or in the CMSimple_XH Forum.

License

Minicounter_XH is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Minicounter_XH is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantibility or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Minicounter_XH. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Copyright © 2012-2019 Christoph M. Becker

Slovak translation © 2012 Dr. Martin Sereday
Danish translation © 2012 Jens Maegard

Credits

The plugin logo has been designed by Yusuke Kamiyamane. Many thanks for publishing this icon under CC BY-SA.

Many thanks to the community at the CMSimple_XH-Forum for tips, suggestions and testing.

And last but not least many thanks to Peter Harteg, the “father” of CMSimple, and all developers of CMSimple_XH without whom this amazing CMS wouldn’t exist.