I know how to make a basic hit counter but I want to make one that only increases if the person is new to the site.

How would I?

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Using cookies is one way of doing it, basically each time a user comes to the site if they have a cookie that says they have visited then you do nothing, if they have not got a cookie then set a cookie that says they have visited and set it to expire in 24 hours (1440 mins).

That to me is the most simple way, though there are other ways that others will maybe prefer.

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I agree with Lee. Avoid using IPs.

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Jeremy Miller
Content Farmer - Optimized Automated Blog Posting

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Thanks, I'll look into that.

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Their are also tricks if the user is blocking cookies or is in a proxy or for some reason, cookies aren't working. You could detect if a cookie was stored (Set the cookie, redirect to a page, check if that cookie was just set). If they cant catch cookies, redirect to a page that will track them via querystring - this querystring will hold the session info for that user and should be appended to all internal links.

Another tip would be track in the DB your own session management, so you don't need cookies, you are basing it on all their info, which builds a "key" that is that unique user. - but use cookies/sessions whenever possible this way would be pretty intense on your server.

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