Counter and Elapsed Time Display
At the bottom of (almost) every page on this Website is a widget that looks like this

 

Whole Site This Page


Counters

  • The number on the top left hand side is a cumulative total and shows how many times all the pages on the whole of this site have been visited.

  • The number on the top right hand side is the count for the current page (the one you are on) only.

Timers

  • The numbers at the bottom left (that look like 00:00:00) indicate how much time has elapsed since someone visited a page anywhere on this site.

  • The right one tells you how long ago this page was visited by someone else.

Purpose of Counters and Elapsed timers
They are handy for two reasons:
  • Counters give you an idea of the popularity of a particular page. This helps if you are not sure what to download - If it has a high counter value it means people have downloaded this file often and maybe you should too :-)

  • Elapsed timers help you to figure out, probably better than the counters, when last a page was visited but more importantly, they allow you to get a feel for how busy the site is at any particular time. If most of the timers on the pages you go to have values of a few seconds, you are on the site at a busy time of the day and your downloads might be slow.