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.

erravi

Quantely Activity is a lightweight, first-party plugin for WordPress that records pageviews and events.
Quantely Activity is built to capture activity reliably under imperfect conditions through server-side recording and optional client-side signals, while supporting filtering for bots, unwanted pages, IP sources and selectable WordPress logged-in roles.
Quantely Activity can be used for:
<ul>
<li>Monitoring site behavior</li>
<li>Reviewing traffic patterns</li>
<li>Security and bot analysis</li>
<li>Feeding downstream analytics layers</li>
</ul>
Quantely Activity is turn-key: install it, and pageviews and events should begin appearing shortly after. Raw activity data is retained for a configurable short period, helping keep the plugin lightweight and privacy-conscious.
<h3>What Quantely Activity is</h3>
Quantely Activity is a capture and monitoring layer. It is designed to record activity on your site in a structured and reliable way, with a strong focus on signal capture and data integrity.
Unlike many analytics tools, it does not focus on marketing analytics, attribution modelling, or behavioral profiling. It also does not rely solely on browser JavaScript. A server-side baseline helps ensure pageviews are still captured when scripts or beacons fail.
<h3>Hybrid capture engine</h3>
The plugin combines server-side pageview capture with optional browser-side signals.
Typical flow:
Browser request 
↓ 
Server pageview baseline 
↓ 
Browser attach (Beacon) 
– engagement pings 
– interaction events 
↓ 
Correlation via pageview identifiers 
↓ 
Bot classification and exclusions 
↓ 
Deduplication and storage
This architecture helps keep capture reliable under real-world conditions where browser-only tracking can miss signals.
<h3>Event correlation and deduplication</h3>
Quantely Activity links browser-side signals back to the pageview where they occurred.
Engagement pings, clicks, form submissions, and similar events can be correlated to their originating pageview. Built-in deduplication helps avoid duplicate records when similar signals are captured from both browser and server-side sources.
This keeps the activity stream more accurate and easier to interpret.
<h3>Fully on-site</h3>
All captured activity is stored in your own WordPress database.
Quantely Activity does not send captured activity data to external services. IP addresses are never stored in plain form, and the plugin does not perform cross-site tracking.
<h3>Privacy-aware design</h3>
The plugin is designed with privacy-conscious principles in mind:
<ul>
<li>No plain IP addresses stored</li>
<li>Short configurable retention window</li>
<li>Optional honoring of GPC / DNT signals</li>
<li>No external tracking services</li>
<li>Data remains on your own site</li>
</ul>
This gives site owners visibility into activity while keeping capture local and controlled.
<h3>Hooks</h3>
Quantely Activity exposes a small developer API for integrations and downstream processing.
<ul>
<li><code>qmon_hit_before_insert</code> — Filter a normalized hit array before it is stored.</li>
<li><code>qmon_hit_recorded</code> — Action fired after a hit has been stored. This is the main integration point for forwarding or persisting captured records.</li>
<li><code>qmon_event_normalize</code> — Filter a normalized event payload before it is finalized.</li>
<li><code>qmon_event_db_dedupe_window_sec</code> — Filter the database deduplication window for events.</li>
<li><code>qmon_bot_verdict</code> — Filter the bot-classification verdict before it is finalized.</li>
</ul>

Quantely Activity

Quantely Activity is a lightweight, first-party plugin for WordPress that records pageviews and events.

PageViews Counter vs Quantely Activity