In this tutorial I'll show you by example how to make a hit counter that doesn't require mysql or changing permissions on the ftp. It works simply by creating a directory and writing to a file called hitdata.txt

Everyone likes to know how many views they have had to there site, and a hit counter does just that. I wrote this in a class, hopefully that doesn't confuse some beginners, because this is a beginner tutorial.

class Counter { /* Counter Class Constructor - Called on initialization*/ function Counter(){ if($this->checkdir("/phpcounter")) { // checks if director /counter/ exists // directory exists or was created. // Now we'll check for the data file holding the hits. if(file_exists($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/phpcounter/hitdata.txt")){ // file exists so we read $szCount = $this->readCFile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/phpcounter/hitdata.txt"); // reads the hit data $szCount++; // Increments the hit count by 1. print "$szCount page views"; // Display the hits // now we need to write the new count to the file. $this->writeCFile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/phpcounter/hitdata.txt",$szCount); //write the new count in data file. } else { // file doesn't exists, first view $this->writeCFile($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/phpcounter/hitdata.txt","1"); print "1 page views"; // display the page has been viewed ONE time. } } } /* read file */ function readCFile($oFile){ $oFile = fopen($oFile, "r"); // open file to read $szOutput = fgets($oFile, 255); // get data from file fclose($oFile); // close file return $szOutput; } /* write file */ function writeCFile($oFile, $outputText){ $oFile = fopen($oFile, "w"); // open file to write fputs($oFile, $outputText); // put text in file fclose($oFile); // close file } /* checkdir($string) function to check if the directory exsists */ function checkdir($szText){ // Make the full path to the folder we are checking. $fullPath = $_SERVER['DocumentRoot'] . $szText; if(file_exists($fullPath)){ return true; } else { // path doesn't exsist so we want to create it. $serverPath = $_SERVER['DocumentRoot']; $fullPath = $serverPath.$szText; mkdir($fullPath,0777); // We make the dir and give it full attributes so we can write to the file. if(!file_exists($fullPath)){ return false; } else { return true; } } } }; // then where you want to display your counter just add $counter = new Counter;

Enjoy