Uniquely identifying each & every html template

[Ferrous Cranus]

I use this .htaccess file to rewrite every .html request to counter.py

# =================================================================================================================
RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f 
RewriteRule ^/?(.+\.html) /cgi-bin/counter.py?htmlpage=$1 [L,PT,QSA]
# =================================================================================================================



counter.py script is created for creating, storing, increasing, displaying a counter for each webpage for every website i have.
It's supposed to identify each webpage by a <!-- Number --> and then do it's database stuff from there

# =================================================================================================================
# open current html template and get the page ID number
# =================================================================================================================
f = open( '/home/nikos/public_html/' + page )

# read first line of the file
firstline = f.readline()

# find the ID of the file and store it
pin = re.match( r'<!-- (\d+) -->', firstline ).group(1)
# =================================================================================================================

It works as expected and you can see it works normally by viewing: http//superhost.gr (bottom down its the counter)

What is the problem you ask?!
Problem is that i have to insert at the very first line of every .html template of mine, a unique string containing a number like:

index.html      <!-- 1 -->
somefile.html   <!-- 2-->
other.html      <!-- 3 -->
nikos.html      <!-- 4 -->
cool.html       <!-- 5 -->

to HELP counter.py identify each webpage at a unique way.

Well.... its about 1000 .html files inside my DocumentRoot and i cannot edit ALL of them of course!
Some of them created by Notepad++, some with the use of Dreamweaver and some others with Joomla CMS
Even if i could embed a number to every html page, it would have been a very tedious task, and what if a change was in order? Edit them ALL back again? Of course not.

My question is HOW am i suppose to identify each and every html webpage i have, without the need of editing and embedding a string containing a number for them. In other words by not altering their contents.

or perhaps by modifying them a bit..... but in an automatic way....?

Thank you ALL in advance.