My first impulse is to suggest that you go back to FrontPage rather than use
Publisher for your web pages. Not because of your clock and hit counter
issues, but because FP is a much better choice for building websites than
Publisher...especially if you already own it and know how to use it.
Publisher is a DTP which is suitable for people who already own it and want
to produce relatively simple, small, absolute positioned and static
websites, but with the convenience comes limitations that you don't have in
FP.
As to the code, Publisher does not have built-in support for clocks or hit
counters, but you can use the insert html code fragment feature to insert
code snippets that can work. I say "can" because not all code will. If the
code you are inserting does not work, and you can't edit the code to make it
work, then google for other code snippets that will.
DavidF