I am doing a website for a friend and they have requested a web counter as they want to see how many people have visited theire website. Sadly I have never done one before but said I would try. Any help would be gratefully received.

He would also like a time on his site counting the days, hours and minutes since the start of this year, does any one know how to do this? I was originally going to put it in a marquee but these don't seem to be to popular now. Again, I would be grateful for any help here. thanks.

Do THEY want to see it or do they want their visitors to see it? If it is for their own use, check if the host gives you the server log files. They usually do and they contain every request made. There are programs that can analyze the server logs and present the data in a easy to read format.

If you really mean a counter, a thingie on he page that says how many visitors you've had, you could either install a script or use a service. You can find both at for example http://hotscripts.com . For services look under "Remotely Hosted".

That said, counters aren't very accurate. Still, i think everyone should have one once.
http://htmlhelp.com/faq/html/effects.html#hit-counter

Thanks for that Pandy. Can anyone help with the timer query?

Huh?

I was also looking to add a kind of timer or clock to it going up in months, days, hours and minutes . I have seen them on other sites usually as a countdown but I would like this one to count up, any one able to help, would I be best putting this in a topic of its own?

You'll probably find scripts for timers/clocks at http://www.dynamicdrive.com or at http://www.javascriptkit.com. Or search for server-side timers/clocks.