How to put stuff into your Web-pages so you can use Rootsweb's counter.
A service is available for the Rootsweb community access counts for WWW pages. Complete details of the program are provided by the author, Muhammad A Muquit, in 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.
Scripts are provided so that you can create, modify and query your own counter.
Create
a counter Allows you to create a counter. It will tell you
the code to insert into your page to activate the counter.
Currently OfflineChange
a counter Allows you to reset the count for an existing
counter.
Query
a counter Allows you to check the various counter
information.
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.
Put a line like this in your HTML document:
Use the file name given to you in the "Authorization" step above instead of sample_count.
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,
In which case do this to use the Rootsweb counter:
in which one of the parms must be
or the name you were authorized with instead of sample_count. 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=4 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. |
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=A |
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=sample_count 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_count incr=F&df=sample_count 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 |
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 www8.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/html_extensions.html 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:
It aligns the image with the middle of the current line of text, which is what you'll probably want to do.
This page is based on a page originally developed by kevin@njit.edu /KJW