Hi,
a client needs a basic visitor counter (hits on the home page) and I need one which does not save IP addresses. Is there a stack or script to use? Currently I use HitCounter Stack, but this one saves the IP address on my server…
Thanks,
Jan
GDPR needs to get over it!!!
I think what you need to is something that will anonymize the ip address. Matomo I believe does this by default and Google analytics can be configured to do this as well. Those are both “overkill” for what you are looking for.
I’m not familiar with HitCount, but I think Matomo simply drops the last node of the IP address making it technically anonymous. I don’t know if that’s enough to make it GDPR compliant(1 in 255 IP address) but it shouldn’t be a difficult option to add to HitCount.
I use Matomo for my own site, but for this project overkill wouldn’t even start to describe it 
Doobox Stats stack saves page views - @Doobox would know if it saves IP addresses as part of the text file.
Thanks, I need it even more simple: just a number on the page. It should be visible to all…
I normally use stetic.com for my projects. It costs some money and might be overkill but they offer a counter and they anonymise the IP, all servers are in Germany
Thank you, and yes, it is too much for this task…
This is out of the scope of your request but I tell clients that hit counters are not really worth anything. Many recorded hits are from robots, etc. What does it matter if 5 million people hit a site but only stay for 10 seconds?
Consider analyzing events (clicks on specific buttons, etc). Clients have to educated about these things.
For the record, since the original post requested a counter …
HitCounter has a database file that is, by default, located on your site in the directory of the page on which it is used. But it can be configured to relocate the database file where it is not visible to the client, in a private directory outside the scope of your other files …
FTP to your site, and create a private directory above public_html for example, then configure your HitCounter database file to be located in …/…/…/private/counter1.dat (where the number of …/ is how far up it is from your page to the root of your site, then one more …/ and private to go up out of your site and down into the unreadable directory you just created)
PS: just saw Doug’s comment about anonymizing, and I think that could be done but hashing or otherwise crypting the IP addresses with some simple formula. Also not sure whether that meets the requirement!
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