[DJMaze]

Originally Posted by teknomage1

Isn't a database overkill for a hit counter? That's equivalent to driving across the street.

Not entirely.
Say the file has 1 million entries.
Which will be faster to load: the file or a single SQL query result ?
Which will use less memory: the full file or a single SQL query result ?

Originally Posted by teknomage1

Simply locking the file on write and checking for a lock before reading should solve the problem. Here's the php page on flock http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.flock.php.

i already explained flock here:
Hitcounter problem
The MySQL example is just a follow up to an already available solution.