Online numbers

[dbfletcher]

What the heck was going on two weeks ago when ...

There are currently 48 users online (http://forum.carvewright.com/online.php?). 18 members and 30 guests
Most users ever online was 910, 2 Weeks Ago at 10:31 PM.


910 users online??? It seems lately we have maxed at about 100

[Digitalwoodshop]

79% of all Statistics are made up...

[TerryT]

I have noticed a big change in those numbers with this new forum software. Seems they may be adjustable? LOL.

[spalted]

Maybe it's like Al said in another thread, with the machine improvements not so many are having problems anymore.

Time for a sabotage mission to get the forum numbers back up?...lol

[JDPratt]

79% of all Statistics are made up...

Just spilled my coffee.

I don't get on as much lately because of all the other CW unrelated projects I need to get completed. I definitely enjoy checking in to see what other members are completing though. I am hardly ever on during the weekends, I do this for a living 8-9 hours a day during the week, so I try to stay away from anything shop related during the weekends.

[lynnfrwd]

There is no conspiracy or under handing marketing scheme going on here, guys! I have no clue why that number is 910?!?!? I can't even find where it is pulling it from. I looked under statistics and didn't find any significant increase in activity two weeks ago. The last big rush was when we announced the CarveTight back in June or whenever that was. Even then, I think it was about 110 on at one time. I know they did a follow-up update to our new forum two weeks ago. I think that is when the smilies got corrupted, but I have not heard back from the "software guru" that sits in a little dark room in some undisclosed location tapping away at programming code who no one gets to see or talk to in person. ;)

[spalted]

There is no conspiracy ..........................

Hmmmm.......correct me if I'm wrong but...... isn't that how all attempts to cover up a conspiracy start?.....lol

[HelpBot3000]

They were counting every finger of every user logged on at the time :)

[dbfletcher]

Hmmmm.......correct me if I'm wrong but...... isn't that how all attempts to cover up a conspiracy start?.....lol

And who doesnt love a good conspiracy? I can see it now.. in a few months "60 minutes" will run a story of how the LHR forum was the first forum on the internet to have actual documented aliens from outer space browsing thier forum.

[spalted]

They were counting every finger of every user logged on at the time :)

That can't be, 910 can be divided by both 5 and 10. We are woodworkers, no possible way we all have all our fingers.

[TerryT]

Fingers? Good, I was afraid they were including my weight every time I logged on! LOL Some airlines charge more if you are more than 17 inches across the "seat area".

[lynnfrwd]

OK, I did some research on the "forum for forums" and this is what I am finding out...

Search engines like Google (called "Googlebots"), Yahoo (called "Slurp"), and others send out what is called "crawlers". These crawlers go through 100's at a time and index your website (or in this case, forum). Usually, they will do it twice in one day. They verify links and index keywords, etc. to tell them how to rank websites and provide "answers" to searches that people do from their search engines.

From what I can find, it is a good thing, but can jack with your statistic numbers in a forum.

And yes, I did find out that there are ways to manipulate forums statistics!

[pkunk]

Chris M. has found an ad-on that will be installed soon that will limit access to the forum by unauthorized bot/crawlers and spammers. I counted 3 pages of them the other day just crawling around.

[lynnfrwd]

From what I understand the crawlers don't hurt anything and you want them to rank your website high, its the spammers that we don't want! With restrictions on new users, I think we've got them pretty limited now as to what they can see and do. It just makes it really hard to identify new registrants that are actually legitimate.

[dbfletcher]

From what I understand the crawlers don't hurt anything and you want them to rank your website high, its the spammers that we don't want! With restrictions on new users, I think we've got them pretty limited now as to what they can see and do. It just makes it really hard to identify new registrants that are actually legitimate.

I totally agree with that. As long as the "add-on" still allows you to authorize the major search engines (google, bing, etc) you should be good. If it block all crawlers that would be a bad thing.

[eelamb]

Robots or crawlers can be blocked by using a robot.txt file on the root of your server. On forums I manage I rewrite the code to ask one stray questions that spammers can not answer. If the question is not answered correctly, they are blocked from creating an account. Spammers use programs to find forums, then determine which forum (name) is used, and use a form to input the required information to register for that forum. If they can not asnwer the one extra question that is included in the registration form, they are rejected. Since using this procedure I have had only 2 spammers get registered on the 4 fourms I support in the last 3 years. Thus a lot less time from me is required to maintain the integrety of the forums.