Choosing a Download Counter

by ws_jessica

Now that you have your site setup you are probably wondering which creations of yours are the most popular. Stat counters may be able to tell you what pages are most popular or what file types are most popular, but they can't tell you which files are most downloaded. This is where a download counter comes in.

I know you are probably thinking "but my site has been up for months now, its too late to add a download counter". You can add a download counter whenever you want, but if you want accurate results and you want the least amount of work, it would be best to do it when you are setting up your site. If you wait until later, you'll have more downloads and more pages to add the download counter too. 

First you need to decide what kind of counter you want to use. Most counters use a pop-up download method. Meaning each time your visitor clicks to download a file, a new page will pop up and then it will start downloading. This can get annoying and it makes the download process take longer.

The best method is to set up the download counter on your server and only change the downloading links, without having pop-ups.

SherrieSim was asking me about a download counter and I sent her the links to a few that I knew of, but after trying them out she realized none of them were good. They require sql databases or they have popup downloads, or it costs money, or there were no instructions.

Then I found this one from PHPJunkyard: http://www.phpjunkyard.com/php-click-counter.php (don't worry, it's free)

Official Description:

Ccount is a PHP click counter which can also be used as a download counter. With its help you can count clicks on any link on your website. A great tool if you want to know how many times a link has been clicked, a file downloaded ("download counter") and similar. As long as it's a link - Ccount can count clicks on it!

There is an admin panel, where you can view link statistics: how many times a link has been clicked (both numerical and graphical display of stats), link with most clicks and average clicks per link. You can also easily add, reset or remove links in the admin panel or even display the number of clicks on any web page.

Ccount has been tested on servers under Linux and Windows operating systems.

It is really simple to setup. 

First you need to know what kind of server you are on: Linux or Windows. Your hosting provider should tell you in their FAQ or their advertisements.

You need to know whether or not your server supports PHP4 (again, this should be in their FAQ or ads)

You also need to know how to ftp stuff -- unfortunately this means those of you on free hosts (Iike freewebs or moonfruit) can't use this counter, but they probably provide you with a counter anyways

There is a demo of what it looks like on the official page. SherrieSim is implementing it into her site but you can't really see it, you'll just notice that the links look a little different. Like instead of http://www.yoursite.com/downloads/af_littleblackdress.zip (not a real link) now will look like http://www.yoursite.com/ccount/click.php?id=11 but your visitors won't notice that anyways, all they will see is the word "download" (or image, whichever you're using on your site).

If you read the instructions and get a little confused, please post in the site help area of MySimSite Forum so we can help walk you through it.

Now for those of you who think that you'd want to try a different download counter, here are some alternatives, but I am only recommending the one above:

http://www.sitegadgets.com/info/dl.html

http://www.datatrendsoftware.com/countdown.html

http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/13977.html

Good Luck!