I noticed while trying the new s/w that there are 544 active users of these forums as reported by the figure in the statistics area near the bottom of the forums' main page. What is definition of 'active'? Also, what volume of activity is generated by guests in comparison to registered users? I suppose the number of database accesses resulting from each group could be used as the metric. Just curious.
The answer to the first question is "logged in during the past 20 days" (you can see this if you roll the cursor over the "Active Users" text). I can't answer the second question, because I don't think I have a way of figuring it out. I'd be happy to give out site stats if you are interested.
Thanks, Daniel, but that won't be necessary. Just wondering if there was a way to guage the number of eyeballs out there making use of the forums. The higher the number, the higher the value of the information contained in the forums??
Well, for what it's worth, the web "page" with the highest number of hits on the site is www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php , which is the page on the forums that displays a thread. In August, there were 149500 views of that page, but there's no way (without far, far too much effort) I can split that into registered vs. guest views, or remove the search engine spiders from the tally. The only stats that the forum software tracks of interest are new registrations, user activity, new threads and new posts. The last three months, monthly new posts have hovered around the 1800 mark, the previous high (in the month prior to these three) was 1500. March of this past year was the first time that over 1000 posts were made in a month. The numbers are good, but nothing like some other gardening forums. Then again, we don't advertise to the larger community (it's all done via word of mouth and search engines), and we're not as chitchatty as other places.
The numbers you quoted seem to indicate things are picking up. I agree - quality over quantity. One popular gardening forum has recent posts complaining of pop-ups, spam, and other annoyances. Thanks again.
Would that be the forum that was recently sold and purchased? I can guarantee that won't happen here.
