|
Usage for the graphical counter
- Which arguments are accepted by the program ?
The following arguments are currently recognized:
width=number
Specifies the number of digits in the resulting image.
link=URL of the page on which the counter is located
The link-argument is used to keep track of a certain counter. It should be unique for each counter. A good choice is the URL of the page on which the counter image is located.
increase=number; default 1
Specifies the number by which the counter should be increased. This can be used to check how many times a certain page was visited without increasing the counter. In that case specify increase=0.
Resetting a certain counter is also possible this way by specifying a negative number here.
- What to add in a HTML-page ?
To activate a counter in a certain HTML-page add something like the following:
< IMG SRC="/cgi-yourdomain/nph-count?width=5&link=yourdomain/y ourpage.htm">
Note that the cgi-bin path is /cgi-yourdomain
- How to keep track of a page without anybody knowing ?
In the page you would like to monitor insert something like the following:
< IMG SRC="/cgi-domain/nph-count?link=link_arg&show=NO">
and on a different HTML-page where you would like the check the counter regularly:
< IMG SRC="/cgi-domain/nph-count?link=link_arg&increase=0">
- How to reset a certain counter to zero ?
If you would like to reset a counter to zero, check the counter value and the link argument you used in a HTML-page and open the following URL directly (i.e. by typing it in, in the 'open URL' box):
http://yourdomain.com/cgi-yourdomain/nph-count?link=link _arg&increase=-value
This will reset the counter to zero (note: the counter value can not go negative).
- Can people from the rest of the Internet (ab)use the counter ?
The current version of the counter program doesn't have access control incorporated yet. This means that anyone could maintain a counter on your machine. However, this imposes no security problem for your machine. The next version of the package will have a possibility to restrict who is allowed to start a counter on your server.
- What's the size of the resulting output image ?
The program will return a GIF-image of 20 pixels high and 15 * width pixels wide. This can used to your advantage by specifying the HEIGHT and WIDTH inside the HTML-page. By doing this, during retrieval of the page, the WWW-browser can allocate space for the image while displaying the remainder of the page.
Example:
< IMG SRC="/cgi-bin/nph-count?width=5&link=dummy" WIDTH=75 HEIGHT=20>
|
|
