Im new to the web building business and I have just got my first site up and running. I included a hit counter to my page thats linked to my stats page but now im having second thoughts about it.
If i keep it people my be put off by lack of hits initialy.
Or if I keep it people can see how popular my site is.
Its great for me to log onto my page and see straight away how many hits I have had with out logging onto the account.
Your hosting account should provide you with how many hits as well as much more detailed and valuable information. I personally use Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics). It's free, it's great, and I recommend it!
I agree that a hit counter sort of looks amateurish. If you think about it, you hardly ever see established sites using a counter. Could you imagine Amazon.com or Yahoo.com showing their 478,344,342,341st hit on their site? LOL
If the purpose is just for your own knowledge then use a hidden counter like Sherif suggested. I second Google Analytics. I'm not too fond of web host counters because they use web logs so the count is not very accurate.
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Don't put the cart before the horse. Plan your website, thencreate it.
I agree with hit counters looking amateurish. Google Analytics, as mentioned, is a great free tool for tracking your visitors. Another popular tool is StatCounter (http://www.statcounter.com).
Make sure to add it to every one of your pages otherwise you wont get accurate results about what your visitors are looking for, I'm very impressed with it so far especially the location marks, i mean fancy narrowing down your visitor to the nearest city. Technology = amazing sometimes i find it hard to get my head round it all.
Hit counters (Help or Hassle)
and amateur. jus needed that little push to get it gone. I will loose it i think.
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