Thread:Project:Support desk/Page hits are displayed with 1/reply

Sounds like what you did worked out fine; these numbers also should be taken from the field "page_counter" in the page table.

I would now read the source code, which builds that part of the wiki page and see, when (or why) you have a "1" there. I could imagine that somehow MediaWiki works with a value of "TRUE" there, which PHP can convert into "1". However, just a guess.

Btw: Which skin are you using? Vector or an own skin? Please make sure that this skin has been updated as well (also that the skin file Vector.php has been updated).