Manual:$wgDisableCounters

Details
  determines whether or not to update the number of times a page has been viewed.

If   is set to false, each page will have a counter in its footer saying: ""

This setting also determines whether  is available.

This variable is initialized in  .

The initial value is  .

To override the default value, add the line   to the file  .

The value of the counter is updated in   in the function <tvar|doViewUpdates> </>.

(In a previous version, this was <tvar|Article> </> in the function <tvar|incViewCount> </>.)

The variable <tvar|DisableCounters> </> is also referred to in other script files.

Alternatives
If performance problems due to high hit counts updating the <tvar|page> </> table is a concern, a less dramatic alternative to disabling them may be to tweak <tvar|HitcounterUpdateFreq> </>.

You can also retrieve such statistics through your apache (or squid if using squid caching) request logs.

Disabled in 1.25.0. See Requests for comment/Removing hit counters from MediaWiki core and other alternatives.