Chapter 16: Counters,
Guestbooks and Search Engines
Note: This chapter only applies if your web page
is stored on a web server, and not on your local hard drive.
Both counters and guestbooks require access to the web server on
which your web pages are hosted, and the ability to write CGIs.
However, for those of us who host our web pages at a service
provider, and not on our own web server, and do not want to write
our own CGIs, there are free services who offer counters and
guestbooks.
Counters
A counter is just what you would imagine it to be: a count of how
many people have accessed your web site.
This is very useful information, but not necessarily information
you would like to display to everyone! If you don't expect your
site to get many "hits" (visits), consider displaying
the counter on a page that only you know the address for, and not
on your main home page.
The following web sites will keep count for you, and provide you
with various ways of accessing the counter:
| Count 4 All | http://www.count4all.com/ |
| WebTracker | http://www.fxweb.holowww.com/tracker/ |
| Internet Count | http://www.icount.com/ |
Guestbooks
A guestbook is a page where visitors can enter comments about
your site, and especially view the comments left by other people.
The following web sites provide you with free guestbook
facilities (they typically provide you with a page where visitors
enter comments, and then store all the entered comments for you):
| Piett Guestbooks | http://www.piett.com/pgb/ |
| LPage | http://www.lpage.com/ |
Search Engines
If you are providing a commercial service, it is a good idea to
submit your web page location to several different search
engines. All the major search engines provide you with a screen
where you can submit your location. Look for a link to this on
their home pages.
There are also a few services which will submit your location for
you to many different search engines at once, saving you having
to go to each search engine yourself.
The most well-known of these services is SubmitIt: http://www.submit-it.com/.
Links to a few such sites can be found at http://www.submit.com/sub/.