I've been doing a lot of searching and I can't nail down exactly to how to accomplish this...

What I want to do is create a simple (unique) visitor counter on my DNN 6.1.5 site.  I have a lot of experience with ASP programming and a little bit with ASP.NET.  I prefer to avoid bulky third party hit counting modules.  Also, I have never seen one of those that will work for me--I want to grab the raw number of hits and I need to place it in a footer.   Some hit count modules do provide tokens, such as [TEXTHITCOUNT] or whatnot, but I cannot use the replace tokens option because I don't need/want the hit count displayed inside of a container--I need to display it in a stand-alone .aspx file.

Anyway, with a normal ASP.NET application, I could simply add code in global.aspx so that on Application_start, I create and initialize a hitcount variable.  Then I would increment that variable on Session_start.  I could then access that variable from anywhere I needed to.  I could then write the current count to a database or text file when the application is going to shut down, so that my hit count is persistent through server restarts, etc.

Through my research, it seems I cannot do this in DNN 6.  I see the global.aspx file but it contains only one line of code:
<%@ Application Codebehind="Global.asax.cs" Inherits="DotNetNuke.Common.DotNetNukeHttpApplication" Language="C#" %>

So there is no code behind file specified.  I understand from research that DNN actually consumes the event information via the DotNetNukeHttpApplication module:
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/F...

Finally, I have many articles that describe creating custom Http modules for DNN and I finally gave up because I always hit issues that I cannot work past.  So I instead turned to trying to create my own skin object/control to do the same thing.  But again, I have failed to find a concrete example of accessing the equivalent events/information of Application_Start and Session_Start from within a skin object/control.

Can anyone provide me with a concrete code example of accessing/using the Application_Start and Session_Start events from within the DNN framework, preferably via a skin control/object?

(Sorry for the long description but I assure you this is not one of those lazy posts trying to get someone to do the work for me.  I have spent over a week writing code, researching, and exploring numerous avenues and have been left frustrated and broken...)

Please help!

Thank you for your reply.

I actually know how to create modules and skin objects.

What I cannot nail down is exactly how to access the session_start/end and application_start/end events that are, under a regular ASP.NET environment, accessible in global.asax.  Because all of the events are consumed in DNN 6, adding code in global.asax or in a code behind fie global.asax.cs, for example, does not work.

I would greatly appreciate an example of a module.ascx.cs code example that simply does something (anything) on application_start and something else on session_start (I can of course extrapolate how to do something on application/session_end from that).

I searched all through the API documentation for DNN 6.1, which is what I'm  using, and I cannot any reference to the application_start/end event.  I HAVE found references to what I believe is the equivalent of session_start/end events, but I am not sure.

I appreciate any help that anyone can provide in a small concrete example!