ActionScript 2.0 :: Live PHP And Flash Hit Counter

I am using flash 8 and actionscript 2.0 to build this application. I am trying to compile a page hit counter that is only activated when the timeline hits a certain position. I thought I had it with the following script. But the count would randomly get reset back to zero.

Here is the PHP script:
PHP Code:
<?php
//Reading the file
$count = file_get_contents("main_counter.txt");
//Increasing the count
$count = explode("=", $count);
Code] .....

With this attempt I used the "loadVaribales" method to communicate with the PHP and TEXT files. Here is the code in the first frame of the timeline:
Code:
this.loadVariables("counters/main_counter.txt?num="+random(999999));

Here is the code in the second frame:
Code:
this.loadVariables("counters/main_counter.php?num="+random(999999));

It works awesome for a few weeks then the count gets reset to zero. Why the contents of the text file are randomly getting deleted.