Lee.org

Someone asked me for my Versacounter sourcecode. (See Journal 10-23-03). Here are my notes from vcounter.pl:

# VersaCounter (version 1.0a) 12-1-03
# Version 1.0 by Michael Chavel. Version 1.0a modifications by Lee Sonko
# 1.0a is a simple port that uses .png files instead of .gif files.
# Recent versions (after 2001?) of the Perl GD module don’t support .gif files
# due to patent issues with Unisys. 1.0a gets around that issue by swapping .gifs
# for .png files.

And here is the new (version 1.0a) code.

In case you don’t have it, here is the original (version 1.0) Vesacounter code from Chavel’s website.

I think Versacounter is a terrific website counter program. I like it primarily because it doesn’t need server side includes, it’s customizable on a per-counter basis, it’s a snap to make new counters, and the code on the web page is very easy to read. Here’s an example from this Journal page:


<img src="http://lee.org/scgi-bin/vcounter.pl?&page=journal_index_hits&block=1" alt="[hit meter]">
hits from <a href="http://lee.org/counter.html"></a>
<img src="http://lee.org/scgi-bin/vcounter.pl?&page=journal_index_visits&block=14400"
alt="[visit meter]"> visits to my journal homepage since October 23rd, 2003.
<a href="http://lee.org/counter.html"><a>


That code makes 2 graphical counters, reading “nnn hits from nnn visits to my journal homepage…” I count ‘visits’ as a bunch of requests from the same IP address in 14,400 seconds…. 4 hours. Simple.