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.

jinaldesai

FlareStats brings your CloudFlare web analytics data directly into the WordPress admin. No third-party tracking services, no cookies — just privacy-preserving analytics from Cloudflare.
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Dashboard Widget — A compact summary widget on the WordPress Dashboard.</li>
<li>Full Analytics Screen — Dedicated admin page with a 7-day daily chart, top 5 pages, and top 3 countries.</li>
<li>Last 7 Days — Data always covers the rolling last 7 days.</li>
<li>Cloudflare GraphQL API — Connects to the Cloudflare GraphQL Analytics API using your API Token.</li>
<li>Lightweight & Dependency-Free — No external JavaScript frameworks; charts are CSS-based.</li>
<li>Caching — API responses cached via WordPress transients to minimise API calls.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Requirements</h4>
<ul>
<li>A <a href="https://cloudflare.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Cloudflare</a> account with Web Analytics enabled for your site.</li>
<li>A Cloudflare API Token with Account Analytics: Read permission.</li>
<li>Your Cloudflare Account ID.</li>
<li>Your FlareStats Site Tag (optional but recommended for multi-site accounts).</li>
</ul>
<h4>Configuration</h4>
<ol>
<li>In your Cloudflare dashboard go to My Profile → API Tokens and create a token with Account Analytics: Read permission scoped to your account.</li>
<li>Note your Account ID (visible in the Cloudflare dashboard right-hand sidebar).</li>
<li>Go to Analytics & Logs → Web Analytics, select your site, and copy the Site Tag from the site settings (optional).</li>
<li>In WordPress go to FlareStats → Settings and enter your credentials.</li>
</ol>
<h4>Privacy / Tracking Disclosure</h4>
FlareStats displays analytics data inside WordPress by requesting reports from Cloudflare Web Analytics.
What this plugin sends to external services
<ul>
<li>This plugin sends authenticated requests from your WordPress site to the Cloudflare GraphQL API (<code>api.cloudflare.com</code>) using your configured API token, account ID, and site tag (if provided).</li>
<li>Request parameters include reporting date ranges and query fields needed to fetch analytics metrics.</li>
</ul>
What this plugin receives
<ul>
<li>Aggregated analytics data such as pageviews, visits, top pages, top countries, browser/device, and referrer/source metrics.</li>
<li>This plugin displays those metrics in the WordPress admin dashboard and analytics screens.</li>
</ul>
What this plugin stores in WordPress
<ul>
<li>Plugin settings in <code>wp_options</code> (for example API token, account ID, site tag, cache duration).</li>
<li>Cached analytics responses in WordPress transients to reduce API calls.</li>
</ul>
Personal data handling
<ul>
<li>This plugin does not create its own visitor tracking cookies.</li>
<li>Visitor analytics collection is performed by Cloudflare Web Analytics on your site.</li>
<li>This plugin does not add separate per-visitor profile records in WordPress for analytics.</li>
</ul>
Data retention / access
<ul>
<li>Cached analytics data is temporary and expires according to the configured cache duration.</li>
<li>Plugin settings and analytics screens are only accessible to users with appropriate admin capabilities (for example <code>manage_options</code>).</li>
</ul>
Third-party policies
<ul>
<li>Cloudflare Privacy Policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/</li>
<li>Cloudflare Terms: https://www.cloudflare.com/website-terms/</li>
</ul>
Site owners are responsible for ensuring their site’s public privacy policy accurately describes how Cloudflare Web Analytics is used.

FlareStats

Display CloudFlare Web Analytics data — pageviews, visitors, top pages and top countries — right in your WordPress admin.

PageViews Counter vs FlareStats