Putting a Counter on Your Web Page

There is a counter installed on bama for you to use. You can call it in two ways; one just gives the number (like 1, 2, or 3), while the other gives an ordinal number (like 1st, 2nd, or 3rd).

To insert the counter in your page, use a server-side include (SSI). Simply put, a page using SSI contains instructions for bama to do something before sending that page to the viewer. The instructions are given as part of HTML comments which are replaced with the results, if any.

The HTML comment/SSI instruction needed for each counter is given below. You can use it in one of two ways:

  1. Surround it with text to indicate what the number means, such as "You are visitor number ".
  2. Enclose it within another HTML comment to keep the number from being visible on the page. You can always view the HTML source within the browser to see the current count.

Number:

<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/counter"-->

Ordinal:

<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/counter-ord"-->

The counter keeps a record file in a centralized area on bama. If you use it on different pages it will keep a different count for each page since it keeps a record based on the calling page.

You can also check the current counts for all of your pages that use the counter by using the "Check Your Web Counter" tool.

Pages which include counters should be have the suffix .shtml as opposed to .html or .htm to indicate to the server that the page needs to be checked for server-side includes.