Is it a record ??

[Graham_and_Karen]

I see that the record for the most users online at one time was broken - now stands at 42 on 8th August. I suppose it must be true but I've never seen anywhere near that many users online at one time. Does anyone remember seeing lots of users on the 8th?

[Ploppy]

Hmm I'm very dubious about this to be honest, The maximum I have ever seen is about 10 including guests.
I suspect the other hits were search-engine 'bots' trawling the web. The forum software recognizes some bot hits.

i.e Since the 9th July Google has hit us over 1800 times.

Try doing a search in Google on , say, Plakforms and see what it finds... hey we're famous!

Glad you mentioned this, its given me an hour of fun researching it  

Cheers,

Paul

[Noopsy]

What's a "bot", Ploppy, and can anything be done to stop them distorting our direct user stastistics?

Noopsy

[Ploppy]

What's a "bot", Ploppy, and can anything be done to stop them distorting our direct user stastistics?

Noopsy
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=2144\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hi Noopsy,

A bot or spider is a computer program that crawls around the Web indexing Web pages and or links in those pages.
 
The spider indexes specific information from each web page that it visits. Many web sites get listed in the search engines when spiders visit their sites and index them to their web catalog.

The spider may have found our page from links on other websites. With a lot of search engines you can 'submit' your website, i.e I could go to Google and submit 'http://forums.plakias.co.uk' and some time later an incey wincey spider would come calling to index our site.

By default our forum software recognized 5 search bot/spiders, I have now updated the list to be over a hundred.

Yes they are listed as active users (by default they get classed as 'Guests') and hence influence stats (I think! More research needed)

Cheers,

Paul

[Noopsy]

O.K.  Thanks, Ploppy.  I can see now how people trawling the Web, and coming across and viewing our site on a casual basis can be classed as "guests".  Maybe to make the stats. a bit more meaningful to us we could have a separate line of "Most members ever online..."

Noopsy

[Ploppy]

Yes I see your point. Personally I see 'Guests' as valid statistics, i.e someone who is viewing our forum but has not yet or does not want to become a member.

The spider/bot is a completely automated program that has no human input, should this count towards board usage statistics? Most would say no and I have stopped it from appearing as an active user.

They are still treated as guests insofar as what they can do, i.e read topics but not post replys. I could stop them altogether but I believe we should have the forum searched and indexed for the likes of Google so that other people can find the forum just like I did all those moons ago!

Still not sure whether it will now get counted for the 'Most Users Online'. There are some pending modifications in the forum community* that may address this issue, I'll keep you posted

Paul

* There are many forums that just discuss the forum software that we use on this forum. Blimey that sounded confusing  

[ostraco]

They are still treated as guests insofar as what they can do, i.e read topics but not post replys. I could stop them altogether but I believe we should have the forum searched and indexed for the likes of Google so that other people can find the forum just like I did all those moons ago!

I've always gone along with that idea too. When I started the site - without a discussion board - I listed it with 3 search engines, but others have picked it up. I do find it very satisfying that if you search for Plakias on Google - the most used search engine - then We come out on top!
As for guests - they are friends who've not introduced themselves yet!

I guess it is a bit confusing though if they are counted as members online.

[Noopsy]

I do agree that real people (as opposed to an impersonal computer program) who haven't signed up should be classed as guests (and be reflected in the usage figures) when viewing our site.

The spider/bot is a completely automated program that has no human input, should this count towards board usage statistics? Most would say no and I have stopped it from appearing as an active user.

They are still treated as guests insofar as what they can do, i.e read topics but not post replys. I could stop them altogether but I believe we should have the forum searched and indexed for the likes of Google so that other people can find the forum just like I did all those moons ago!
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=2151\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

And I entirely agree with the above.  Hopefully this will result in our stats. being a bit more meaningful.  

The idea of a separate members line was to just so as a record could be kept of the time and date when the largest number of us members had been on line together.

Noopsy

[Ploppy]

And I entirely agree with the above.  Hopefully this will result in our stats. being a bit more meaningful. 

The idea of a separate members line was to just so as a record could be kept of the time and date when the largest number of us members had been on line together.

Noopsy
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=2155\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yes this is something I will be looking at, the board itself is very customizable as long as you know your HTML, PHP & SQL!
However there are people working on these sort of things and there is a new member count thing in the works. I'll keep an eye on it.
Right now I'm off to buy my '.... for dummies books'  

Paul

[Noopsy]

Just a quick comment here as I can't do it on the (more relevant) Announcement Forum.

I see that we now have sub-forums.       That's posh!  See!  Someone notices your efforts!

Noopsy  

[Ploppy]

Just a quick comment here as I can't do it on the (more relevant) Announcement Forum.

I see that we now have sub-forums.       That's posh!  See!  Someone notices your efforts!

Noopsy  
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=2192\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks!

As for the Subs they've always been there. Should have 3 Forum Groups (Plakias, Ostraco's Bar & Administration, Feedbacks and Bugs) , you can collapse and expand these over on the right hand side. This is assuming you are looking at the default main board.

I'm still finding stuff now... wow you can do that?  

[Noopsy]

Οh yes.  I get it.  My default board is always expanded, and I alway click on the title of the topic that is shown as unread, then when I've finished reading everything, go back to the other sub-forums by clicking through the titles underneath the banner heading.  Yes, I see that the term "...Subforum" does appear in the title bar when I do that.  Never noticed it before.     What a twit!

Cheers Ploppy.