About this plugin
Netstan Count Lite counts how many times each of your posts is viewed and shows you the numbers.
- View badge – an eye icon with the post’s view count. It appears above the content of single posts automatically, can be placed anywhere with the [netstan_count] shortcode, and themes can print it themselves.
- Dashboard – views today, in the last 7 days, in the last 30 days and all time; a daily chart (30 days) and a weekly chart (12 weeks); top posts and top categories for a date range you choose.
- Accurate counts – visits from logged-in staff and from known bots are ignored, and a reload within 30 minutes is not counted twice.
- Works with page caching – views are recorded by a small script after the page loads, so cached pages are counted too.
- Private by design – no IP addresses, user agents or visitor IDs are stored; only a daily total per post.
- Your data, your call – view history is kept if you delete the plugin, unless you opt in to removing it under Netstan Count > Settings.
Shortcode
[netstan_count] shows the badge for the current post. `[netstan_count id="123"]` shows it for a specific post.
For theme developers
Call netstan_count_badge( $post_id ) (returns escaped HTML) to print the badge yourself. To load the counts for a whole list of posts in a single query first, call netstan_count_prefetch( $post_ids ). Declare add_theme_support( 'netstan-count' ) so the plugin doesn’t also add its automatic badge, or use the netstan_count_theme_renders_badge filter.
Third-party libraries
js, used to draw the dashboard charts. js’s own bundle includes @kurkle/color (MIT License). js
Privacy
Netstan Count Lite stores a daily view total per post (post ID, date, count). It stores no IP address, user agent or visitor identifier, and sends no data to any external service.
It sets one first-party cookie, netstan_count_viewed_{post ID}, on a visitor’s first view of a post. It expires after 30 minutes, contains no personal information, and only prevents reloads from being counted repeatedly. Suggested wording is added to Settings > Privacy > Policy Guide.