Site Meter Counters

Say you have begun posting entries to your Blog, and you think your Blog looks pretty decent; do you ever wonder if anyone is reading it, or how many people have visited your Blog today? I'm sure you have seen many web page counters. If you want to install free counters for your Blogs, go on reading.

I have just installed a Site Meter counter on this Blog. To take advantage of the service, just go to http://www.sitemeter.com/ There you will see instructions which I won't repeat.

Things I like about Site Meter:

1. One of the counter styles allows you to specify the counter start use date, which I think is quite useful to some web authors
2. They have a method to directly insert HTML code into your Blog template, so that you don't have to mess around with editing the template (and make mistakes). See more comments below.
3. At first glance, the statistics looks very comprehensive. I have only one visitor so far, therefore the stats may make more sense when I read them later.

What I don't like is that account name must be prefixed. For example, mine is prefixed with "s17". Thus I cannot use a consistent name across all services.

Although Site Meter allows you to directly insert HTML code into your template, I think this is only good for beginners. If you are a little adventurous like me, you may want to opt for the JavaScript code, which gives you more stats info. To do that:

1. Remember to back up your template before you do any editing
2. Remove the HTML code that was automatically inserted by Site Meter. You should be able to find it near the end of the template.
3. Copy the JavaScript HTML code from Site Meter
4. Paste the code into your template. I recommend you to do it at the bottom of the Side Bar section. Search the template with the strings id="powered-by"> and www.blogger.com on the same line, insert the JavaScript code below it.
5. Preview the template. If you see problem, then you should start over by clearing the edit, or just quit. Note that you may not see the counter at this stage.
6. If template looks ok, then save it, re-publish your Blog and view it. Check whether the counter is displayed correctly.