How to reset the Article Hits Counter
The Article Hit Counter enables you to see how many times your website's Articles have been viewed in a given period of time.
Note that this does not tell you how long a visitor spent viewing an Article.
Nor does it tell you how many individual visitors have viewed an Article. One visitor could have viewed the Article many times.
The Hits Counter does however indicate whether key landing pages are receiving more hits than others pages of your website.
Why reset the Hits Counter?
Maybe you have recently overhauled your website's content and navigation and want to monitor future usage starting with a 'clean slate'.
Or maybe your website developer forgot to perform this task when they handed the website over to you!
How to reset Article Hits by running an SQL Query
You could search the Joomla Extensions Directory for a third party extension.
But we advise instead using the built-in functionality of the PhpMyAdmin application included with your website's Hosting Account.
This requires that you:
- know the Database Prefix of your website's database, and
- can sign into the Hosting Control Panel.
Finding the database prefix is easy.
In your website's Dashboard you will find the the Database Tables Prefix in the Database section under the Server tab of the Global Configuration screen.
If your hosting account has only one database then you can see the prefix in the Hosting Control Panel PhpMyAdmin screen.
If you are having trouble signing into your Hosting Control Panel then contact the hosting provider.
Once signed into the Hosting Control Panel, look for a button labelled PhpMyAdmin.
Select the button to run a simple SQL query - see the steps below - to clear the Hits Counter.
When done, sign into your website's Dashboard and check all the hits = 0.
Run this simple SQL Query
Step 1: Open the SQL tab
To open the SQL tab simply click on the SQL link.
See image below.
Step 2: Run the SQL Query
Enter the following SQL command in the large field (see image below) and select GO to reset ALL article hits:
UPDATE `#_content` SET `hits` = 0
Important
Before you do, replace # in the above command with the Database Prefix for your website.
The Database Prefix is the sequence of letters/numbers before the underscore ( _ ) in the name of each database table.
Example
If Database Prefix were 1234 then the SQL command will be:
UPDATE `1234_content` SET `hits` = 0
Scroll down to select the GO button to confirm the command.
Result
Caution
You will not be able to undo this change except be restoring a previous back up copy of your website.
For this reason, we advise making a full backup of your website before resetting the Article Hits Counter.
