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.

SupportFromRichard

SFR Analytics is a self-hosted analytics plugin for WordPress. All visitor data is stored in your own database — nothing is sent to third-party services. No cookies, no external scripts, no tracking pixels.
Get a clear picture of your site’s traffic without compromising your visitors’ privacy.
Need a central multi-site dashboard? Use the free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/sfr-analytics-hub/" rel="ugc">SFR Analytics Hub</a> plugin to aggregate analytics from multiple WordPress sites.
<h4>Dashboard at a Glance</h4>
<ul>
<li>Views, Visitors, Sessions — core metrics with period-over-period comparison</li>
<li>Bounce Rate & Pages per Session — engagement indicators</li>
<li>Traffic Over Time — interactive line chart with date range presets</li>
<li>Top Content — your most viewed posts and pages</li>
<li>Traffic Sources — where your visitors are coming from</li>
<li>Top Referring Sites — individual domains sending you traffic</li>
<li>Entry & Exit Pages — first and last pages in each visit</li>
<li>Device Types — desktop, mobile and tablet breakdown</li>
<li>Browsers & Operating Systems — which browsers and OS your visitors use</li>
<li>Geographic Distribution — visitor countries (only available if using a CDN like Cloudflare that provides country headers; all other tracking works without a CDN)</li>
<li>Campaign Performance — UTM campaign results with source/medium drill-down</li>
<li>Online Now — on-demand live visitor count with optional online-only auto-refresh in the dashboard</li>
</ul>
All dashboard sections are collapsible — show only what matters to you.
<h4>Campaign Manager & UTM Link Builder</h4>
Plan and track marketing campaigns without leaving WordPress:
<ul>
<li>Create campaigns with notes and track their performance over time</li>
<li>Build UTM links with a visual tool — pick a page, choose source/medium/campaign, and get a ready-to-use URL</li>
<li>Smart page picker — search across all your content types with post type and category filtering</li>
<li>Preset sources and mediums — common options (Facebook, Google, newsletter, etc.) with clear descriptions</li>
<li>Save generated links for quick reference and reuse</li>
<li>Custom sources and mediums — add your own and they’re saved for next time</li>
<li>Auto-lowercase campaign names to prevent data fragmentation</li>
</ul>
<h4>Smart Bot Detection</h4>
Not all traffic is human. SFR Analytics filters out noise automatically:
<ul>
<li>200+ known bot patterns — search engines, AI crawlers, SEO tools, monitoring bots, headless browsers, security scanners and more</li>
<li>JavaScript verification — a lightweight inline script confirms real browser execution, so bots that don’t run JavaScript are never counted</li>
<li>Missing header detection — flags requests without User-Agent or Accept-Language headers</li>
<li>Filterable patterns — add your own via the <code>sfran_bot_patterns</code> filter</li>
</ul>
The dashboard shows you exactly how much traffic was filtered: total requests vs verified human visits.
<h4>Privacy First</h4>
<ul>
<li>No cookies — visitor identification uses anonymous hashed fingerprints</li>
<li>No PII stored — IP addresses are hashed (SHA-256), never stored in plain text</li>
<li>Optional IP anonymisation — strip the last octet before hashing</li>
<li>Do Not Track support — respects the browser DNT header when enabled</li>
<li>Local storage only — your data never leaves your server</li>
<li>Configurable retention — automatically delete data after 30 to 3,650 days</li>
<li>GDPR-ready privacy text — copy-paste paragraph for your privacy policy</li>
</ul>
<h4>IP & Country Filtering</h4>
<ul>
<li>Exclude specific IP addresses or CIDR ranges (e.g. <code>192.168.1.0/24</code>)</li>
<li>One-click “Ignore My IP” button</li>
<li>Exclude entire countries by country code</li>
<li>Exclude logged-in users by role (administrators, editors, etc.)</li>
</ul>
<h4>REST API</h4>
A full set of authenticated REST API endpoints lets you access your analytics data programmatically:
<ul>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/summary</code> — overview stats with optional comparison</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/top-content</code> — most viewed content with pagination</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/traffic-sources</code> — referrer breakdown</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/time-series</code> — daily views/visitors/sessions</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/campaigns</code> — campaign performance</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/entry-pages</code> and <code>/sfran/v1/exit-pages</code></li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/referrers</code> — top referring domains</li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/devices</code>, <code>/sfran/v1/browsers</code>, <code>/sfran/v1/geographic</code></li>
<li><code>/sfran/v1/online-now</code> — current active visitor count for the last N minutes (default 5)</li>
</ul>
All endpoints require authentication (WordPress Application Passwords or other REST API auth) and the <code>manage_options</code> capability. Use these to build custom dashboards, export data, or integrate with other tools.
<h4>Performance</h4>
<ul>
<li>Batch processing — pageviews are buffered and written in batches, reducing database load</li>
<li>Indexed tables — optimised queries for fast dashboard rendering</li>
<li>Lightweight frontend — a single inline verification script, no external files loaded for visitors</li>
<li>No impact on page speed — tracking uses <code>navigator.sendBeacon</code> (non-blocking)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Works with SFR Analytics Hub</h4>
SFR Analytics collects data on each individual site.
For cross-site reporting, install the free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/sfr-analytics-hub/" rel="ugc">SFR Analytics Hub</a> on your main site.
With SFR Analytics Hub, you can also view live online visitors across all connected sites from one central dashboard.
The WordPress.org Hub edition supports up to 3 connected sites.
Need more than 3 sites with the same workflow? See <a href="https://supportfromrichard.co.uk/sfr-analytics/" rel="nofollow ugc">SFR Analytics Hub Pro</a>.

SFR Analytics

Lightweight, privacy-focused WordPress analytics. Track pageviews, visitors, campaigns and more — all data stored locally in your own database.

PageViews Counter vs SFR Analytics