Ha ha ha ha
hey yes you have to sign up but you have control over the design statistics browser type hits and more let the man choose you already pasted the link. thats how this works people post a question and then they look and decide themselves and you don't need to know too much about html coding for placing it that applies to all counters and you also have to be careful as a lot of the free counter providers don't like other people advertising on the sites that have their counters. Unless you have freewebsite (from your ISP) space or space you have bought. All the other so called "free site for you" webproviders have their adverts all over the pages they give you.
Oh and if you use Frontpage as a program to write your site it has a counter built in so you can put on on if you want.