Simply Writing to a File via Internet

Is there any way, in any HTML-insertable language (JavaScript, Perl, etc.) that you can write to a file on the local server or some how keep a record of something?
I want to keep a dynamic list of who's coming to a website, and need it to be added to each time the page is loaded. The operation would run in the background with no visual trace.
I don't want to just use the automatic emailing method, as obviously that would get a little tedious with the emails.

Any ideas?

 

Assuming that I understand your question correctly, the short answer is "yes".

Since the server displays the pages you create (and may run scripts as part of building/processing a page), you can both collect and display dynamic information as part of your page. You could use either perl or javascript for this purpose. You might look at a "guestbook" as a simple example of the type of code that could be used.

Note that the Apache web server, (as one example) produces all sorts of logfile information about who visits your site, their IP address, etc., so you may not need any additional recording (although you will have to parse the logfiles). You may be able to use the information that is already being recorded instead of writing your own code to record it again.

Hope this helps.

 

If you want to know without having the user log in each time you can use cookies like they do here. Write into your code where it will check for the existence of your cookie for a registered user, if it is there it will log their access into a database and if they are not registered or have deleted your cookie it will redirect them to a login page.