I don't like solutions that require loading images via PHP.
Nor do I like the ajax solution because say someone leaches or even locally uses the image and forgets the PHP call.
Is it possible to simply parse Apache logs or such to get a more efficient and accurate view count.
If there are such libraries out there already, I would love to know about them, I can't seem to find any. I know there are statistics software like that but it's been near a decade since I've used anything like that (gotten lazy with Google Analytics), would like some recommendation on that as well if it would help.