Manual:$wgDisableCounters

Statistics and content analysis: $wgDisableCounters
Disable page view counters.
Introduced in version:	Before 1.1.0
Deprecated in version:	1.25.0 (Gerrit change 150699; git #90d90dad)
Removed in version:	1.35.0 (Gerrit change 579769; git #81a31e16)
Allowed values:	(boolean)
Default value:	false
Other settings: Alphabetical | By function

This feature is used in extension HitCounters since REL1_25+.

Details

$wgDisableCounters determines whether or not to update the number of times a page has been viewed. If $wgDisableCounters is set to false, each page will have a counter in its footer saying: "This page has been accessed 256 times."

This setting also determines whether Special:PopularPages is available.

The initial value is false. To override the default value, add the line $wgDisableCounters = true; to the file LocalSettings.php .

The value of the counter is updated in includes/WikiPage.php in the function doViewUpdates(). (In a previous version, this was includes/Article.php in the function incViewCount().) The variable $wgDisableCounters is also referred to in other script files.

Warning:

Once disabled you will lose the correct view counts forever!

If you are using squid caching, you will want to disable these counters, as squid caching prevents mediawiki from seeing all requests, which makes these counters inaccurate.

Alternatives

If performance problems due to high hit counts updating the page table is a concern, a less dramatic alternative to disabling them may be to tweak $wgHitcounterUpdateFreq .

You can also retrieve such statistics through your apache (or squid if using squid caching) request logs.

Disabled in 1.25.0. See Removing hit counters from MediaWiki core and other alternatives.

Warning:

The update to MediaWiki version 1.25 will cause the loss of view counts forever, if extension HitCounters is not installed!

See also

• Extension:HitCounters - extension as an alternative for MediaWiki 1.25+.