Any advice on adding a 'hit counter' to a website? I see a lot of 'website builder' type applications that many hosting sites offer have the option of adding a counter, but I'm not using their packaged or WYSIWYG type website generators. I did a quick google search on 'hit counter' and came up with a lot of potential sites offering 'free' counters. Are they really 'free', of do they require subscription web statistics, or do they leech on and attach themselves to your web site and send you to some severer half way around the world to keep the stats? Maybe I'm paranoid, but the first one I looked at required a 'sign up' and the URL of the website the counter would be posted on. Maybe it's standard fare for these counters, but I wanted to get some second opinions first.
Isn't there something that can be coded into your HTML and left self-contained to your website?
Any help or direction would be appreciated.

Thanks

Most web hosts have web site stats software installed that you can look at that takes information from the server logs. One of the best external stat services is Google's Analytics. Some you can install on your server is AWStats, Webalizer and Analog

http://www.google.com/analytics/
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/
http://www.analog.cx/

My host supplies the option for AWstats.
It's pretty good, though it won't break things down by individual page.
There is a ton of info to process though.

Thank for the info, guys. I almost forgot I posted this question. Appreciate the help.