Word Count Meter

Whether or not you do NaNoWriMo, here’s a word meter that you can use to share your progress! Just enter your current and target word counts (the default is 50000, for NaNo). You can pick from eight colours for the progress bar as well as set the size for the meter. When you’re done, click “Give me a meter!” and the preview and code will pop up beneath it. Then you just copy and paste it in wherever you want it to go.

If you want to change it, just amend the form and click the button again!

Important: Don’t enter anything except numbers, because the form can’t generate a percentage with non-numeric characters. You can’t really blame it; bet you can’t, either.

Current Word Count:
Total Word Goal:
Colour:
Size (note):
File type (note):

Sample Meter:

30000 / 50000
(60%)

Troubleshooting etc:

  1. This form doesn’t work at all.

    2. Then you either have Javascript disabled, or not installed at all. Or you might need to update your browser.

  2. I keep getting “NaN” for a percentage.

    3. It stands for “Not a Number”. Make sure that you’re not putting any non-numeric characters into the text fields. That includes commas and decimal points, although I have no idea why anyone would need to use decimal points in a word count. Anyway, the form can only calculate numbers.

  3. But I want commas in my numbers, damn it!

    4. Put them in manually after you’ve pasted the code where you want it. That’s way easier than trying to persuade Javascript to do it at my end.

  4. The images aren’t showing up.

    5. Images are hosted on Photobucket.com, so either that’s down, or you’re currently not connected to the internet. Either way, there’s nothing I can do about it.

  5. The meter breaks when I copy and paste the code into my blog.

    6. Make sure you’re not using a Rich Text editor. If you are, switch to HTML editor. Aside from that, your site or blog layout template might be interfering with the meter (adding borders, etc). I’ve tried to account for that as much as possible, but if it happens, you need to tweak that at your end.

  6. What’s the file type thing about?

    7. The default setting will give you the two rounded parts of the meter as .png files. I like .pngs because they give you proper transparency. But not every browser supports them properly (Internet Explorer sucks), so if .png doesn’t work for you, try going for .gif instead. This will give you .gif files instead. They look a bit more pixellated, but they work universally. Or should. If they don’t, someone needs a new computer.

  7. A note about the size option:

    8. The 50%-sized version doesn’t display correctly in the preview, because of some quirk of my site layout. I haven’t figured it out yet, but the important thing is that it’ll show up just as correctly as the other sizes if you copy and paste the code. So don’t worry if it doesn’t look right on this page, that’s normal. Or not. But I don’t have an explanation for it right now.

» 25 comments:

  1. Thank you for this. It is relatively easy to manipulate as well. Do you have any information on how one might change it from a “bar” to…. let’s say, a wand? I have been trying to figure out how to do this for some time. Any information you could pass on would be much appreciated.

    Reply ↓

    • Hey – glad you’re liking it! I’m afraid it uses premade graphics, though, and there’s no real way to change a picture into a different picture, you know? If you had a picture of a wand, you could make your own graphics, and plug those into the code. But this one only has the one set of graphics. :/ I don’t know how savvy you are with making graphics, but if you want to give it a shot, I’ll try to help as best I can.

      Reply ↓

  3. Thanks for this site. I love the idea of keeping track of my writing. I’m still trying to get it figured out, but this is awesome!

    Reply ↓

  5. This is a fabulous idea! I saw it on another author’s site and just added one to my own. It’s a great way to let your readers know what you’re working on and how it’s going. Not to mention the motivation it gives to the author when they see how much they’ve accomplished. Thank you very much!

    Reply ↓

    • It’s so cool to see this make its way across the web. :D Thanks for dropping by! I really appreciate it. It’s great to see folks get some use out of this!

      Reply ↓

  8. Wow! I like this a lot; I’m using it to keep updates on finished chapters for my readers. I like how it doesn’t make an automatic label for what the bar is for, so I can just put how many chapters I want to write, and how many I have written, and it does the hard work for me :P

    Thanks!

    Reply ↓

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