Introduction
Third party website plugins and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) can be tremendously useful to add content or functionality to a web page. I use several such as Google Visualization API and Prism Code Highlighter.
Some keep the base code they use on their own website, some use a CDN (Content Delivery Network), and some allow you to download the entire code base and put it on your own server.
Where possible, nowadays because of some of the problems I have had over the years with some I have used, I try and put their code to display the application on a separate page and use a SSI (Server-Side Include) to add it to the pages I want to use it on. Another method would be to use an iframe.
Some of the problems I have come across are that sometimes I have found something a little better to use, someone changed the look or functionality of a plugin, and sometimes they have disappeared altogther. Some of the problems can be alleviated by using a server-side include - the code need only be changed in one or at least just a few places instead of every page. Sometimes the SSI I use has been completely emptied rather than have a "not found" error on the pages.
This page looks at some of the plugins and APIs I have used over the years.
GoStats Hit Counters
A selecton of old Bravenet hit counters
Hit counters are looked on with distain now, but at one time almost every page you visited had one. I've still got a soft spot for them.
In 2002, I added a hit counter to my pages from GoStats. I chose them because they had a nice selection of hit counters and the JavaScript they had you add to the pages produced a nice set of analytics you could access from their website.
Old GoStats logo
GoStats worked well for me, but then in 2018, the hit counter on my pages disappeared and I could no longer log into their website. There was no warning, no messages, nothing. They simply stopped working. My later pages used an SSI to add the code from a snippet which I emptied so it no longer shows, but I've still got over 700 pages where the code was added to each page individually and which now shows the text "GoStats stats counter" with a link that goes to an NGNIX 502 Bad Gateway page.
Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity
When I first started self-hosting my sites in June 2003, I used Apache web log analyzers such as Analog, AWStats, and Webalizer to visualize and make sense of my visitors. Google Analytics became publically available in November 2005. The pages and reports it produced looked so much better than the log analyzers did, and when GoStats stopped working in 2018, I soon started adding the Google Analytics code to my pages.
Microsoft Clarity works with Google Analytics and was introduced in October 2020, and I soon added that to the pages as well. Just a few years later I realized I did not want or need all the report pages that Google Analytics or Clarity was offering me. I went back to using the old school Apache log analyzers. Just like I did with GoStats, the earlier pages I wrote contained the code directly, later pages used a SSI. Emptying the SSI file was easy but I still have many pages that contain the code I am no longer interested in.
Google Programmable Search
Soon after I first wrote the site in May 1999, I thought it would be a great idea to have a site search feature on it. I looked around and found PicoSearch (Internet Archive). This worked marvelously until July 2014, when it stopped working.
PicosSearch logo
Looking around I found Google Programmable Search or Google Site Search as it was called back then and added that to my pages.
In Janaury 2026, something odd happened to it, it started looking differently in different browsers...
Google Programmable Search as it appears in Chrome and Opera browsers
This is how it should appear.
Google Programmable Search as it appears in the Edge browser
Google Programmable Search as it appears in the Firefox browser
I'm not quite sure what is happening to it, whether Google changed the code or if it is something to do with the way it is implemented in a browser update.
The search bar can be customized using CSS but I hope I do not have to go back to writing CSS for different browsers as we had to in the days of Internet Explorer 6 from 2001 to 2011.