BoUk

<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>


PageViews Counter

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

erravi

<p>Quantely Activity is a lightweight, privacy-conscious plugin that records visitor activity (pageviews and interactions).</p>
<p>It helps site owners understand what is happening on their website for monitoring, diagnostics, performance checks, and analytics validation. It also makes this data available to downstream analytics tools.</p>
<p>Quantely Activity runs fully on-site, uses no external services, stores data only briefly, supports cookie-free operation, does not depend on JavaScript, and does not store plain IP addresses.</p>
<h3>Key features</h3>
<h4>Robust traffic monitoring</h4>
<p>Quantely Activity captures activity reliably under imperfect conditions.</p>
<ul>
<li>Server-side pageview capture (always-on baseline)</li>
<li>Optional browser signals (clicks, forms, engagement)</li>
<li>Server-side event capture from plugins, including WooCommerce</li>
<li>Server and browser alignment via <code>pv_id</code></li>
<li>Receive-order recording with preserved origin metadata</li>
<li>Lightweight deduplication of duplicate signals</li>
</ul>
<h4>Traffic context</h4>
<p>Each hit is enriched with context for interpretation and downstream use.</p>
<ul>
<li>UTM parameters (<code>utm_source</code>, <code>utm_medium</code>, etc.)</li>
<li>Click IDs (e.g. <code>gclid</code>, <code>fbclid</code>)</li>
<li>Channel classification (email, paid, social, ai, search, referral, direct, internal)</li>
<li>Visitor continuity via cookies and derived identifiers</li>
</ul>
<h4>Engagement signals</h4>
<p>Engagement is captured efficiently using milestone-based signals.</p>
<ul>
<li>One maximum engagement value per pageview</li>
<li>Fibonacci-based milestones (<code>2–89 seconds</code>)</li>
<li>No continuous timers or heavy scripts</li>
</ul>
<h4>Internal traffic filtering</h4>
<p>Internal or irrelevant traffic can be excluded without losing visibility.</p>
<ul>
<li>Role-based exclusions (e.g. admins)</li>
<li>IP-based exclusions</li>
<li>Path-based exclusions</li>
<li>Hits remain visible but are marked (<code>is_excluded</code>)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Bot filtering</h4>
<p>Automated traffic is detected and classified at capture time.</p>
<ul>
<li><code>is_nonhuman</code>, <code>bot_label</code>, <code>bot_reason</code></li>
<li>Detection based on patterns, endpoints, and behavior</li>
<li>Reclassification possible as patterns emerge</li>
</ul>
<h3>Privacy</h3>
<p>Designed to minimize data exposure and keep control local.</p>
<ul>
<li>No plain IP storage</li>
<li>Short retention window</li>
<li>GPC / DNT support</li>
<li>No external tracking services</li>
<li>Data stored fully on-site</li>
</ul>
<h3>Integrations</h3>
<p>Captured data is structured so other tools can use it.</p>
<ul>
<li>Activity data can feed downstream analytics tools</li>
<li>Events remain connected to their original page context</li>
<li>Compatible with analytics and processing workflows</li>
</ul>
<p>Quantely Activity exposes a small developer API for integrations and downstream processing.</p>
<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

See what is really happening on your WordPress website.

PageViews Counter vs Quantely Activity