Expert Net
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How to add a Counter to your page
Introduction
A service is available for the Expert Net customers to tally up counts for their WWW
pages. Complete details of the program are provided by the author, Muhammad A Muquit, in http://www.muquit.com/muquit/software/Count/Count.html.
The program, called Count.cgi, provides very nice on-the-fly graphics to show the
counts, such as , or the display can be hidden.
Authorization
Availability is limited to customers at Expert Net, and counting can only be done for documents that reside on a Web server at Expert Net. You must send mail to us, support@xprt.net. In our response to your authorization we will provide you with a "datafile" name. For the time being, you can freely use sample.dat for your datafile wherever it's mentioned in this document.
Precautions
Access and specifications are unfortunately subject to change without prior notification. The count value itself can only be considered approximate, as it is not possible to account for cached access of pages, bad access to the counter itself, and other tough luck. Too much use of counters in your documents slows down access. This document has dozens, which is why it loads so slowly.
Simplest Form
Put a line like this in your HTML document:
- <img src="http://www.xprt.net/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df=sample.dat">
Use the file name given to you in the "Authorization" step above instead of sample.dat.
How to Get Really Fancy Digits
This counter makes use of the average Web browser's ability to display embedded graphic images, and neat gizmos on many servers known as the cgi-bin programs.
So you must use the HTML markup for embedded graphics,
- <IMG SRC=image_comes_from>
In which case do this to use the Expert Net counter:
- <IMG SRC="http://www.xprt.net/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?parms">
in which one of the parms must be
- df=sample.dat
or the name you were authorized with instead of sample.dat. Each of the parameters specified must be separated with a verticle bar, the | symbol, or by an amperstand, the & symbol. The params can be any or all of the following:
| Parameter | Name | Description | Examples | Default |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ft=X | Frame Thickness | You can wrap the counter in an ornamental frame of X pixels thick. Use 0 for no frame. Values over 5 make a nice 3-D effect. | ft=7 |
ft=0 No frame |
| frgb=R;G;B | Frame Color | Specifies the color of the frame in RGB (red/green/blue) format. Each color component,
R, G, and B is specified as a value between 0 and 255. If you use ft=#
without a frgb= param, the default color is used. If you specify a frgb= without a ft=#, then the frame thickness defaults to 5. All the examples show ft=5. Knowing the RGB sequence for a given color is not always for most of us regular folks, but Count.cgi does provide a way to find the values for a given color. Refer to the rgb.txt paragraph in the Additional Tricks section below. |
frgb=69;139;50 frgb=255;0;0 Default |
frgb=100;139;216 Cyan |
| tr=B | Transparency On/Off | You can specify if your counter image will have a transparent color with the Boolean B.
So tr=Y means there will be a transparent color; and tr=N means there will
not. It does not matter if the GIF files used for the digits are "transparent";
as is shown next, you must specify explicitly which color to make transparent. If you specify a trgb=, then you do not need to specify tr=Y. Valid values for B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0. |
tr=N tr=Y |
tr=N No transparency |
| trgb=R;G;B | Transparent Color | Here you specify the color to render as transparent, given in red/green/blue format. When you provide a trgb=, you can skip the tr=Y; it is automatically turned on for you. For additional info regarding RGB (red/green/blue) format, refer to the rgb.txt paragraph in the Additional Tricks section below. |
trgb=0;255;0 (green) trgb=0;0;0 (black) |
frgb=0;0;0 Black |
| md=X | Max Digits | Defines maximum number of digits to display. Any value between 5 and 10 inclusive are permitted. Padding with leading zeros is automatically done for you; longer counts are truncated to the given X. | md=5 md=5 Truncation of 9 digit value |
md=10 Without padding |
| pad=B | No Padding | Turn padding on/off in conjunction with md= setting. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0. (There are some bugs in the padding feature, as shown in the examples. These will be fixed shortly.) |
pad=Y With default md=10 md=5&pad=N No padding value shorter than max 5. md=5&pad=N Truncation of 9 digit value without padding. |
pad=N Without specification of a md= value
|
| dd=A | Digits Dir | Denotes what style digits will be used. The examples show all those currently installed. | dd=A dd=B dd=C dd=D dd=E dd=F dd=G dd=H dd=I dd=J dd=K dd=L dd=M dd=N dd=O dd=P dd=Q dd=R dd=S dd=T dd=U dd=V dd=W dd=X dd=Y dd=Z dd=AA dd=AB dd=AC dd=AD |
dd=A |
| wxh=W;H | Digit Size | This is used to specify the width and height of an individual digit image in pixels
for character set used. As you can see in the examples for the dd=option, the
default size is fine. The exception is dd=D, which is slightly smaller. This parameter will be obsolete with the next release of WWWcounter; sizing will be automatically done up for you. |
dd=D Default size is wrong for style "D" dd=D&wxh=9;13 Correct! |
wxh=15;20 Correct for styles A, B, and C |
| st=X | Start count | Used to set the initial value of the counter to some number X. This is only valid if you are allowed to create a new counter file. | (This space intentionally left blank.) | st=1 Count starts at one |
| sh=B | Show digits | Used to turn display of digits on or off according to the Boolean B. When sh=T,
digits are shown as in most of the examples given here. If sh=F no digits will
show, but the counter will still increment; instead of digits a transparent 1x1 GIF is
displayed. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0. |
An invisible counter is above! |
sh=Y Display digits |
| df=file | Data File for counting | Specifies the name of the file for storing the count in. The file must be
allocated to you as was mentioned in the "Authorizations" section above. You can
use df=YourUserName.dat for testing and so on, but of course the value in it is not
reliable. One special use of the parameter is df=RANDOM. This returns a random number using the fractional portion of the host's time of day clock as a seed for the generator. Unlike all other WWWcounter parameters, the file name provided is case-sensitive, except for the value random. Or Random, or rANDOM, etc. |
A random number |
df=RANDOM Roll of the dice! |
| incr=B | Increment count | Makes it possible to display the current count without incrementing the count. This
can be used to examine the count for reporting or other purposes without adding to the
count. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0. |
incr=F&df=sample.dat incr=F&df=sample.dat The count does not go up, unless due to someone else accessing the counter at the same time as you are. |
incr=T Increment count on each invocation. |
| lit=X | Display literal | Makes it possible to display a given, predetermined value. Valid values for the string X are digit. |
lit=123 Almost all the examples on this page are made with lit=X |
None |
Additional Tricks: Alignment
Alignment of the GIF image into your text is pretty random looking unless you control placement with the ALIGN= attribute of the <IMG> markup. You can check http://www.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/ for details on how image alignment might be done in HTML-3, being as it looks like what Netscape did is going to become the standard.
Or you could skip looking at it and just try:
- <IMG SRC="stuff shown above" ALIGN=ABSMIDDLE>
It aligns the image with the middle of the current line of text, which is what you'll probably want to do.
Additional Tricks: RGB
The use of red/green/blue (RGB) values for describing colors is pretty common in such places as X-windows programming, tweaking GIF files, necromancy, and other places where regular people like myself should not tread. To get by this a gimmic has been added to WWWcounter so that mere mortals can connect a humanistic color such as "gold" to the corresponding RGB secret code. This makes use of the installed rgb.txt file common with Xwindows, which can vary by local. One solution available to you is to check this list of RGB equivalents, which I think is the X-consortum version.
The Expert Net installation of the WWWcounter will not let you use specifications such as "gold", as this is quite time consuming when large numbers of lookups are done. But it will look up the value for you: For "Color Mapping" values click HERE
- <img src="http://www.xprt.net/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?frgb=gold">
This results in an error message such as:
Take the RGB value given to make your markup appear as:
- <img src="http://www.xprt.net/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?frgb=255;215;0">
Which results in a "gold" frame:
Good Luck!
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