Unique Page Views

[Wolphie]

I just can't get my head around how this should work. Currently i have a field which updates every time a page is viewed, by any user, so every refresh it will increment by 1. Which isn't efficient enough, considering anybody could create an application to exploit it.

 

(I'm creating a tutorial system by the way)

 

So, i started thinking what if i created a seperate table?

But if i done that how would i increment unique page views for each unique IP address?

So i then thought, if i created a seperate table, and then insert a new row for each IP address that visits and then count how many rows exist for a specific article. Then that got me thinking, a new row for each unique IP address? What if theirs a 1000 unique IP's a day? Wouldn't that just make things clustered?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[mpharo]

What I would do is generate a PHP session variable and then insert that into the database along with the IP and Date/Time...So every time a new session is started on your site it is considered a new hit...you then record the IP address and you can get 2 pieces of information from this....You query for unique ip addresses for unique hits for a period of time and then you can query for the session variable to get how many total hits or how many total hits for a unique IP address for a given time...Although the sessions can still be abused, you can filter them out with the unique IP addresses....