Directions for a Home Page Counter
Digit Styles
The digits used in this program are individual GIF files. This gives flexibility of using digits of your choice. The digit images are named as zero.gif, one.gif,.... nine.gif. At run-time, simply the directory of the images is specified to use a different style. Therefore, a single program can generate digits of various styles. Here are the supplied digit styles.
| Style A |
|
designed by Muhammad A Muquit (digits/A) can be used for clock or date. |
|---|---|---|
| Style B |
|
Borrowed from HTML-access counter. (digits/B) |
| Style C |
|
designed by benjamin@pop3.oro.net (digits/C) |
| Style D |
|
designed by Muhammad A Muquit (digits/D) can be used for clock or date. |
| Style E |
|
designed by Muhammad A Muquit (digits/E) can be used for clock or date. |
| Style F |
|
designed by Nathan Robinson (digits/F) can be used fo clock or date. |
| Style G |
|
designed by Nathan Robinson (digits/G) can be used fo clock or date. |
| Style H |
|
designed by Nathan Robinson (digits/H) can be used fo clock or date. |
A suggested use of style E is to make the white color transparent (you will know about transparency later).
How to call the program?
You can refer to the program from web page like this:<img src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?df=sample.dat" align=absmiddle>
The string between ? and " is called the QUERY_STRING. Make sure there is no newlines in the <img src= line and no space in the QUERY_STRING. Here in, df=sample.dat, df means datafile and sample.dat is the counter datafile. The counter stores the hits in this file. Use your login name for the name of your datafile. Such as: jdoe.dat.
The counter program has lots of options, you can make it work and look the
way you desire. In the query string, you can use the options described
in the table below. The options can be separated by a | or a &. You can
use either one or both. Here is an example:
<img src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?ft=T&frgb=gold|df=sample.dat" align=absmiddle>
The options can be in any order and not case sensitive.
Counter Options
| Parameter | Name | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| display=X | Specifies what to display. |
A valid string can be specified with display= parameter
to display counter, clock or date.
The valid value for the string parameter X is
counter,clock or date
For counter, this parameter is not need as counter is
the default display type.
Note: clock and date will only work with digit style A, D, E, F, G, and H. |
display=counter |
| timezone=X | Specifies timezone. |
The parameter timezone= is only significant with
display=clock or display=date. Use this parameter
if you want to display time or date of another timezone. For example,
for
eastern time with daylight saving time, timezone=EST5EDT,
central time with daylight saving time, timezone=CST6CDT,
mountain time with daylight saving time, timezone=MST7MDT,
pacific time with daylight saving time, timezone=PST8PDT.
for GMT, timezone=GMT.
An offset from GMT can be used as well, timezone=GMT+6.
Note, the GMT offset method may not work properly with SYSV type
OS. Look at the manpage for ctime, localtime for your machine.
If the clock displays your local time wrong, you must specify your timezone with that parameter in order to display the correct time. |
None. |
| dformat=X | Specifies date format. | This parameter is only significant with display=date. The valid value for the string parameter X is any combination of MMDDYY (Month-Day-Year). For example, dformat=ddmmyy, dformat=YYMMDD. | dformat=MMDDYY |
| 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=6 |
| 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. The color can be specified as hex string or a name. Do not use a # before the hex string as Netscape. For example, if you want to specify white in hex, you do frgb=ffffff. |
frgb=100;139;216
or frgb=648bd8 |
| 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"; 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
No Transparency |
| 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=6
Without padding |
| pad=B | Padding with 0's | Turn padding on/off in conjunction with md= setting. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0. |
pad=N
Without specification of a md=value
pad=Y |
| dd=A | Digit Directory | Denotes directory of a specific styles of digits. Four styles of digits are suppiled. They are kept at the directories A,B,C and D respectively. |
dd=A
My green led digits |
| st=X | Start Count | Used to set the initial value of the counter to some number X. This is only valid if you decided to allow automatic datafile creation. This is a bad practice to compile with this option, however it makes site maintaining easier. Note that this parameter has no effect if the datafile alreay exist. If you want to change the counter value in a existing datafile, hand edit the file. The minimum value for st is 1. |
st=1 Count starts at 1 |
| sh=B | Show digits |
Used to turn display of digits on or off according to the
Boolean B. When sh=T, counter will be displayed and incremented,
this is the default behavior.
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 |
sh=Y |
| df=data_file | Datafile to store count |
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=random
to diaplay a random number.
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. |
df=random
if no datafile is specified |
| 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=T
Increment the counter on each invocation |
| lit=X | Display literal | Makes it possible to display a given, predetermined value. Valid values for the string X are digits. | None |
| negate=B | Negate the color | Makes it possible to negate the color of the counter digits. Note that the Frame is exempted from negating. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0. |
negate=F
Do not negate |
| degrees=X | Rotate X degrees | Makes it possible to rotate the counter image X degree. The possible values of X is 90, 180, 270 and 360. Note 360 is meaningless as the counter will come back to the original 0 degree. |
degrees=270
With rotate=Y and without degrees=X rotate 270 degreess clockwise |
| rotate=B | Rotate On/Off | The Boolean value B turns on or off rotating. If you use degrees= settting, rotate is not needed. Valid values for the Boolean parameter B are Y, N, T, F, 1, or 0. |
rotate=F
Do not rotate |