Simple PHP Visitor Counter

This small PHP script enables counting visitors on a website by storing the visitor count in a text file (count.txt). The file is locked using flock() to avoid issues with simultaneous access (race conditions).

Features

• Simple PHP script, easy to integrate into existing websites
• Prevents write conflicts through file locking
• No database required, purely file-based
• Suitable for small to medium websites and blogs (e.g. HTMLy)

Installation

1. Upload the files counter.php and an empty file count.txt to your webspace (e.g. Strato).
2. Make sure count.txt is writable (e.g. adjust file permissions).
3. Include the counter in your website using PHP, e.g.:

4. Visit your website and the counter will automatically increment the visitor count.

Notes

• Ideally, count.txt should be located outside the web root or protected by .htaccess so that nobody can directly modify the file.
• The counter counts every page request, including bots and reloads. For more refined counting, additional mechanisms (cookies, user-agent filtering) would need to be added.

License

MIT License – see LICENSE file.