Statistics

[Teaos]

While looking around the main site I was looking at the statsI noticed that there are some random jumps. Some rather recently.

Do you guys advertise the site at all. There must be something that causes these jumps.

Although I am impressed at the numbers the site pulls in especially since lots of sites died after trek finished growing.

[Jabber Swarky]

Hey, does this thing work out "visitors" by ISP adresses?

Because, umm.. not saying you guys ARENT getting a lot of visitors.. but, some ISP's use rotating adresses.. so, like every hour or so, everyone gets their ISP adress switched. Its to help keep server load down or something, but a lot of people like using it to avoid bans on forums.. and it also has the side effect of messing up webcounters.

Heh, also... I log on to DITL at school, as well, so that means your getting a double hit from me ^^ I know that doesnt seem like much, but if EVERYONE on the forums goofs off at work at least once to check the forums for 5 minuites then the numbers start to add up...

[Graham Kennedy]

We've spotted these jumps, and frankly we're at a bit of a loss as to what's causing them.

Twice before we have had big jumps that turned out to be because the site had been written up in a magazine - SFX once and Internet Magazine once. Another time we got a big huge jump because somebody used a website downloader program that didn't work well and just kept hitting the site over and over again.

These jumps seem a bit odd. For one thing, they seem to be single day events for the most part. We get numbers that go normal-normal-HUGE-normal-HUGE-normal-normal. If it was the result of an advert or something I'd expect a gradual tail off. Mind you, this recent jump DID have a gradual tail off.

Today is shaping to be a huge one. I just don't get it.

As for the counter, Ian knows how that works, not me. Ask him!

[Teaos]

I think maybe someone on one of the really massive trek sites like Startrek.com might mention the site on one of the message boards there. Due to their high traffic volume we'd get a jump but since the message only lasts a day it would be a one day thing.

I have seen the site mentioned a few times at other sites.

Twice before we have had big jumps that turned out to be because the site had been written up in a magazine - SFX once and Internet Magazine once.

That must be a huge kick seeing your site in a magazine? Do you have copies of them?

[Bryan Moore]

I often log on from multiple I.P. addresses, due to the school servers rotating daily (at least, I believe so), my home address, my parents home address, etc.

[Graham Kennedy]

That must be a huge kick seeing your site in a magazine? Do you have copies of them?

Heh, yeah it was. They don't even tell you, in both cases I only found out because somebody emailed me saying they'd read it. I ran out and bought copies of course. The Internet Magazine one had me right next to a huge article about porn on the internet, lol. Alas the mags vanished over the years, I have no idea where they are now or even if I have them at all in some drawer somewhere.

[Mikey]

I'm sure you can get copies from the publishers. Having your site featured was certainly well-deserved, BTW.

[Graham Kennedy]

Thankee. It was only a tiny little mention in both cases, one of those "here's our ten cool sites of the month" kind of thing. But they printed my name! How cool is that!

[IanKennedy]

We don't count by ip addresses or any such things. Quite simply we count you when you arrive at the index page. As we use frames you only load that once in a given visit. Any other pages you go to after that do not count as a new visit, just a page load. If you leave the site and then go back to it you count as another visit.

We have been getting a lot of traffic from a search bot recently (they account for 13% of the traffic this month so far). So I've just blocked that bot from indexing the site. The site is based in Russia, which I don't mind but if you go there and search for us we don't even show up. Perhaps it's them causing the problem.

[IanKennedy]

The magazine article was about the 5 busiest free hosted sites in the UK. They got their list by asking all the IPS to provide their most visited sites. At that time we were with Demon Internet and they put us forward. Not bad for two men in and a couple of computers (much as it is now).

These days we have to pay for web hosting as our bandwidth is way over what the free people will allow. For a while we where with tripod, which was free but we paid to remove the adverts. After a while they stopped allowing that so we moved on. Now we're with a company in the US called Sunwave (www.sunwave.com). For $25/month you get 1000MB of disk space and 100GB of transfer per month. Currently, we're putting out about 50GB a month. The forum accounts for about 40% of that.

[Teaos]

Any news on whats causing the spikes in visitors since you posted the message on the main page?

[Graham Kennedy]

Nope.

[IanKennedy]

Any news on whats causing the spikes in visitors since you posted the message on the main page?

Not a single message has come through.

[Teaos]

I just googled DITL and it came up with a bunch of hits on heaps of websites but nothing huge and nothing that would cause a massive spike.

[Graham Kennedy]

Okay, we just had another one. Yesterday there were 11,314 visitors to the site.

I have absolutely no idea what's going on here. It seems that we are having one of these "super days" ever four or five days, regularly...


Date Number
2008/05/29 ----- 11314
2008/05/28 ----- 2203
2008/05/27 ----- 2473
2008/05/26 ----- 6873
2008/05/25 ----- 8236
2008/05/24 ----- 2844
2008/05/23 ----- 2250
2008/05/22 ----- 2256
2008/05/21 ----- 8416
2008/05/20 ----- 2174
2008/05/19 ----- 2316
2008/05/18 ----- 2996
2008/05/17 ----- 4951
2008/05/16 ----- 10297
2008/05/15 ----- 2036
2008/05/14 ----- 1941
2008/05/13 ----- 25016
2008/05/12 ----- 3241
2008/05/11 ----- 6049
2008/05/10 ----- 15112