One Month Later . . .

[roddy]

Ok, it's been about 4 weeks since the changeover, and although there are still a few tweaks I want to make, it's all running smoothly. The new system has made the admin side of things much easier - notably because it allows 'pre-moderation' - this means that new users' posts do not appear on the board immediately, but get vetted first. That one new feature alone means that I can delete spam and nonsense before it even appears, and users who would previously have had access to the board removed completely can now continue posting.

Other features, such as email updates and the 'report a bad post' function are being used as well, along with the new 'ignore' and 'buddy' lists.

Usage since the changeover has risen considerably - I was expecting it to fall for a while, but that doesn't seem to have happened. Over the last month . . .

We are now averaging well over 2500 visits per day (over 3000 per day on average over this week)

Over 10 new users per day (not all post, some register to use the email updates, or hide the ads)

Well over 100 registered users logging in per day, with a peak of 150 one day last week.

Average of 50-60 new posts per day, rising to 70-80 last week.

It's not the biggest forum on the internet, but it's doing well. Thanks to everyone who helps make it a success.

Roddy

[Alhazred]

Thanks to you for making it available to us!

[zhwj]

Question about the stats on the lower left of the Portal view:

How is the "Most Users Ever" calculated? Given the peak of 150 registered users you quote above (and more pertinently, the 2500 visits), is it actually possible to have a total of 757 users online simultaneously, or is the statistic influenced by routine database stuff behind the scenes? I remember the number jumped considerably right around the time of the change-over.

[roddy]

The 'Most Users Ever' statistic is a bit of a nonsense, as it includes indexers for search engines like Google and Yahoo. If one of their indexing 'bots' comes along and requests 100 pages, it shows up as 100 users. After the move the urls of all topics changed from 'viewtopic.php' to 'displaytopic.php' or something, so the search engines thought they were all new pages and did a massive amount of indexing, hence the high numbers.

The peak of 150 users per day refers to registered, logged-in users. The 2500 (although 3500 the last few days) is visits by 'real' visitors, both guests and members.

The 'Active Users' list is all users logged in within the last hour. The highest I've seen that get is about 28, but I don't keep stats for it, so it may go higher when I'm not looking.

Roddy