This script assumes that there is already a file that contains "0". You can just create this yourself, then upload it to the same directory as this script.
A counter is an essential part of a site to know how many people are coming to site. Here is an easy way to make a counter. All you need is access to PHP and be able to chmod a directory. We’re going to save the amount of hits in a .dat file, so you don’t even need a mySQL database. First off, you have create a directory and CHMOD it 777 so PHP can write the counter.dat file.
The way this counter works is it creates a cookie on the user's computer with their IP and it updates the count according to the status of that cookie. If the cookie is present and the IP in the cookie is the same as the user's current IP then the script knows the user has already been there and it does nothing or if it is present, but has an IP different than the user's current IP or is not present the script knows that the user is either new or was there before, but the cookie has expired so it then updates the count.
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