BoUk

There are deffinitely different methods for implementing pageview counters. Considering some external service such as <a href="https://jetpack.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Jetpack</a> or <a href="https://analytics.google.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Analytics</a> is surely a good option, but there may be scenarios where you may want to handle this just by yourself and have everything more under control.
Since it’s very common to utilize some caching mechanism to improve your site’s performance, implementing counter directly on PHP level wouldn’t work reliably as counter would be barely incremeneted due to the caching. Better solution would be to use WordPress way of triggering AJAX requests and increment pageview counters anytime page is loaded, no matter if served from cache or not.
When we start to think on bigger scale though, we find tradional WP AJAX implementation quite resources heavy as well. This plugin uses slightly more complicated method to increase counters, but it’s very lightweight. In a nuthsell, counters are stored ‘outside’ of WordPress ecosystem into some fast storage such as Memcached or Redis. Then there’s implemented re-occuring cron task on WordPress level, which regularly checks for new counters and store its values as postmeta for each respective post.
Plugin utilizes <a href="https://www.phpfastcache.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">PhpFastCache library</a> which allows to store data into many types of back-ends. See their <a href="https://github.com/PHPSocialNetwork/phpfastcache/blob/master/docs/DRIVERS.md" rel="nofollow ugc">documentation</a> for more details. This feature allows you to choose any back-end depending on your hosting provider.
This plugin comes preconfigured with file-based storage, which should work on any hosting environment, but for higher traffic sites you may want to consider in-memory storage such as MemcacheD.
Whole principle and idea is described in following <a href="https://www.bouk.info/efficient-handling-of-ajax-requests-on-wordpress-platform/" rel="nofollow ugc">article</a> published on my blog.

PageViews Counter

Implement your own pageviews counter in efficient way, using different backend storages such as MemcacheD or Redis.

Tim Boulley

BT Visitor Insights is a privacy-friendly, self-hosted analytics plugin. Everything stays on your server — no Google Analytics, no third-party tracking scripts, no data sent to any external analytics platform.
Activate it and your dashboard starts filling with real visitor data: where they’re from, what pages they viewed, what device they’re on, and how long they’ve been around.
<h4>Why use it?</h4>
<ul>
<li>No third-party tracking. All visitor data stays in your WordPress database.</li>
<li>Zero configuration. Activate the plugin and data starts collecting immediately.</li>
<li>Lightweight. No bulky frontend tracking script — tracking happens server-side, so it works alongside any caching plugin.</li>
<li>Real-time. See who’s on your site right now (last 15 minutes).</li>
<li>Respectful. Honors the Do Not Track browser header and skips logged-in administrators.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Real-time active-visitor count</li>
<li>IP geolocation — city, region, country, country flag</li>
<li>Page view tracking with titles and referrers</li>
<li>Device detection — desktop, mobile, tablet</li>
<li>Browser and operating system breakdown</li>
<li>Top pages, top referrers, top countries</li>
<li>30-day visual bar chart</li>
<li>Per-visitor history — click any IP to see every page they viewed</li>
<li>Date-range filters — today, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, all time</li>
<li>Auto-cleanup — old data is purged based on your configurable retention period (default 90 days)</li>
<li>IP exclusion list and IP anonymization (in Settings)</li>
<li>CSV export of visitors and page views</li>
<li>Dashboard widget on the WP admin home screen</li>
<li>Admin bar badge with live visitor count</li>
<li>Skips bots, crawlers, and logged-in admins</li>
<li>Respects the Do Not Track header</li>
</ul>
<h4>Pro version</h4>
A <a href="https://boulleytechnology.ca/bt-visitor-insights.php" rel="nofollow ugc">Pro version</a> adds:
<ul>
<li>Email digests — daily or weekly HTML report with stats, top pages, and trend comparisons</li>
<li>Traffic-spike alerts — get an email when page views exceed your normal baseline</li>
<li>Geo-blocking — block or redirect visitors from specific countries</li>
<li>Scheduled CSV exports — weekly or monthly automated email exports</li>
<li>Goals & conversions — track URL-based goals and unique converters</li>
<li>REST API access — query stats, visitors, and page views via /wp-json/btvi/v1/</li>
<li>Multi-site rollup — aggregate stats from multiple WordPress sites in one dashboard</li>
<li>White-label dashboard — customize the menu label and page title for client sites</li>
<li>Unlimited data retention — keep visitor history forever</li>
</ul>
The Pro version is sold separately and is not required to use this free plugin.
<h3>External Services</h3>
This plugin uses the ip-api.com geolocation API to look up the city, region, and country for each new visitor IP address. This request is made server-side from your WordPress installation when a visitor is first seen.
<ul>
<li>Service: ip-api.com</li>
<li>What is sent: the visitor’s IP address</li>
<li>When: once per unique visitor IP, server-side</li>
<li>Privacy policy: https://ip-api.com/docs/legal</li>
<li>Terms of service: https://ip-api.com/docs/legal</li>
</ul>
No data is sent to Boulley Technology or any other third party.

BT Visitor Insights

Lightweight, self-hosted visitor analytics with IP geolocation, page views, device detection, and a real-time dashboard. No third-party scripts.

PageViews Counter vs BT Visitor Insights