Page view count

[squiblo]

What is the best way to store "page view count", the page view count will increment by 1 if the users IP address is not already stored.

 

I want to plan for the future in case i start to get a lot of visits, what is your opinion for the best way to do this and why?

 

Thanks

[trq]

http://www.google.com/analytics/

[squiblo]

thorpe, it's not a feature to analyse my website but more of a feature like youtube views.

[scootstah]

Here's a really simple solution:

CREATE TABLE `pageview` (
`user_ip` int(11) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`user_ip`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8

 

// insert
$query = mysql_query("REPLACE INTO pageview (user_ip) VALUES ('" . ip2long($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) . "')");

// retrieve
list($pageviews) = mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(user_ip) FROM pageview"));

echo $pageviews;

[squiblo]

Thanks scootstah, that's what I had in mind but I have a little doubt in my mind with this solution. My website will have dynamic pages (like youtube, adding videos).

 

If I have 1000 "pages" and 10,000 users each visit all of these pages (I know these figures are not true, but I'm trying to plan ahead) that will equal 10,000,000 rows. Something tells me that isn't going to be good, but I have no real evidence to back up my thinking. Is this a problem?

[scootstah]

No it won't. It will only insert a new row if one doesn't already exist. Read: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/replace.html

 

EDIT: Wait, nevermind...I see what you mean.

 

10,000 rows is really diddly in a database. This forum alone has well over 1 million rows just for posts.

 

EDIT 2: Oh god, I can't read today. 10 million...right.

[squiblo]

10,000,000 rows, not 10,000.

 

Thanks for that REPLACE, never seen it before!

[scootstah]

If you want unique visits (by checking an IP) then unfortunately you have to deal with this. If potentially fake views aren't a problem then you can simply increment the view on every page load. I think most sites use this method, including Youtube.

[squiblo]

Thanks scootstah, I think I'm going to use a mixture of IP addresses, UserID's and cookies for people that are logged in and people that are logged out.