How to store page visit counts?

Question

I am working on a project, which requires a page visit count to be shown on the single post.

How can I do this in wordpress, I am guessing, that I have to store them in the same wordpress db?

Answer 1

You can use custom fields for this. What I would suggest is setting up a shortcode you can put on any page you want to show the counter. For an extremely basic example with no HTML formatting, you can do this:

add_shortcode( 'examplecounter', 'counter_shortcode' );
function counter_shortcode( $atts, $content = null ) {
    global $post;
    if( isset( $post->ID ) ) {
        $current_count = get_post_meta( $post->ID, '_counter_custom_field', true );
        $new_count = $current_count === '' ? 1 : $current_count + 1;
        update_post_meta( $post->ID, '_counter_custom_field', $new_count );
        return $new_count;
    }
}

And now you can place [examplecounter] anywhere in a post and it should start counting for you. :)

Answer 2

function k99_post_hits( $id, $action ) {
        $k99_HitMetaField   = '_k99_post_hits'; // Your Custom field that stores the views
        $k99_PostHits   = get_post_meta($id, $k99_HitMetaField, true);
        switch ($action) {
        case 'count' :
        if ( $k99_PostHits =='' ) {
            $k99_PostHits = mt_rand(200,950); //debug joke
            delete_post_meta( $id, $k99_HitMetaField);
            add_post_meta( $id, $k99_HitMetaField, $k99_PostHits );
            }
            $k99_PostHits++;
            update_post_meta( $id, $k99_HitMetaField, $k99_PostHits );
            break;
        case 'display' :
        echo 'this page was viewed: ' , $k99_PostHits ;
} 
}

Edit I: neewbie note - forgot to explain how to use :

Put this in the page you want to count, preferably before anything else but inside the loop.

<?php k99_post_hits( $post->ID, 'count' );  //adding post counter?>

Put the next line where you want to display the count :

<?php k99_post_hits( $post->ID, 'display' );  //adding post counter display ?>