Hi,

It says "The Most Folks in the Forums Concurrently was 658, on 4th May 2006".

Was just curious to know what was particular of that day that there were most folks online ?

The software does not discriminate between spiders / bots and actual users in calculating the number of simultaneous visitors online, unfortunately. On that day there were several spiders intensively going over the site. The 'real' maximum number of visitors online at the same time is probably closer to around 300 or so. I could reset the number if I want to go in and change it in the database, but I don't especially like changing numbers within the database because I don't know the database schema.

Typically there are between 50 and 150 visitors online simultaneously during week days. Some days you may see 175 to 200 people, but usually it's not that many. And on weekends there usually are a lot fewer people visiting.

To see how many registered visitors, unregistered users, and bots are online at any given time, you can use the link Visitors Currently in the Forums: (http://elsmar.com/Forums/online.php) which is on the main forums page near the top.

NOTE: 'Simultaneously' means within the previous 30 minutes on a 'rolling' basis. This is set by the 'cookie timeout' setting where when someone is online it assumes if there is no activity after a 30 minute period that the person has left the site.

Another new record: The Most Folks in the Forums Concurrently was 774, on 25th March 2008.

Looks like this record will be broken soon as the number of users are increasing fast.

Another new record: The Most Folks in the Forums Concurrently was 774, on 25th March 2008.

Looks like this record will be broken soon as the number of users are increasing fast.Oddly, mostly lookers, not posters. Yesterday and today give me the impression of a slow weekend day. As Marc points out, most are unregistered visitors and webbots. I have been in and out all day and we never exceeded 100 registered viewers in a half hour segment. Total unique registered viewers in the last twenty hours was 638.

Oddly, mostly lookers, not posters. Not really 'odd'. The vast majority of visitors do not register. That has always been the case. It doesn't surprise me. I do a lot of Google searches and find information in forums that I don't register in. Just tonight I visited more than 15 to 20 forums looking for information on iMac power supplies (either my power supply is going, or the logic board is), on changing my NG settings to a non-standard port, and a few other things. I didn't register in any. Some had info I needed, others did not. But, I didn't need to register at the forums that had the info I was looking for because I need info which did not involve downloading files.

Consider the number of people who register here. 99% don't post even 1 post. They register to get the file or files they want / need and that's about it.

I think that the most 'applicable' measurable to watch is how many Registered Visitors visit every day. It doesn't correlate to 'participation', but it is the best indicator of how many people are 'regular' repeat visitors. Registered Visitors that have stopped by the forums today as of right now: 649 - Now... Subtract the number of people who registered today and it gives a whiff of an idea of how many people are visiting at least somewhat regularly.