No matter what the purpose of a web site it's extremely useful for site owners to better understand who is coming to the site, where they are coming from, and in many cases the most important information, how often are they coming. Collecting and displaying statistics about site activity is not difficult per say, but building useful activity measurements and a nice interface for the admin presents some interesting challenges that need to be addressed if the system is to be robust. This post is about managing site statistics to help a site better understand it's strengths and weaknesses to eventually become a better site, NOT about invading the privacy of site visitors. Collected data in this case is used purely as a means to provide trend information and current activity numbers.