Time Out for Cookies setting

Well those readings may not be connected to this at all. I know the thread count is and has been well off. There are a lot more posts than that figure currently shows. I don't think it's governed by this setting.

And, it may not even be that value that is behind this. Like I say though, something seems odd. Case in point... A little over an hour ago our online statics were way down, like under maybe 35 including guest, with guests being like 13 or something. Then gradually after a bit the numbers just grew (quickly) substantially, especially the "guest" numbers (it's always the guest numbers that are high). Very suspicious.

Quick question JP.... Were you doing something in the last hour (roughly)? There was a brief period of time where I was trying to reply to this thread and twice after just (literally) a couple minutes I timed out (as seen when I did a preview of my reply) and had to log back in (not happening anymore). It also seemed like out online statics dropped SHARPLY at about that same time period.

41 new members joined on for the period 04/07/2005 until now Nix.

Nothing that should affect that. I changed the display order of the forums this morning, and I just changed this setting we're discussing twice (back to the default now). Don't know if they would cause what you saw though.

If you have multiple threads open in Tabs in FF does that count as one session or multiple ?

Just was curious JP. It was like something caused a "reset" (if ya will) to take place.

Nix, on that "new members" like of things... An interesting set of numbers if ya like numbers (like all statistics, take it for what it is worth): Members joining between 3/16/2005 and 4/8/2005 (I used 3/16 since that's when the board was upgraded as I recall) = 343. Members joining for same period in 2004 = 399.

Anyway... Like I say, the online numbers do seem to give rise to question. Primarily those for "guests".

That would be one session, I believe, Nix. I don't believe it sets a cookie per page, but per site.

I notice that usually at around 4.00pm in australia the number of members might be 4-5 vs guests 25-30 or about 1:6

So when the us and uk wake up a bit more and i should be in bed (it's 12.45am) the current numbers are 22 members 169 guests which is 1:7.68

So.....

Or, are the statistics in any way based on IP (port) connections?

Well I just logged out and opened about 30 threads in tabs and it didn't jump the numbers up by 30.

I tell ya, there's something with that "guest" number. It just seems to run wild. And now, after our experience I go look at a place like techsupportguy forums now and see 114 members and 1380 guests and say hmmm.

Like I said, you would still represent 1 user, no matter how many threads you open. It can identify IPs as well as use session cookies.

This is interesting. The figures seem to be skewing somehow. In checking a couple of other sites I see the same thing. That indicates that it is not the sites per se, but it could be the software the sites are using. Or is it a crawler/search engine?

There is one thing for sure there is an accumulator somewhere that might ought to put in for overtime. :D That accumulator has to release what it is holding too at some point.

How does this impact an advertising dollar that is spent I wonder.

Page loads are monitored elsewhere, I'm pretty sure. I don't believe the forum software is responsible for that.

What we have seen here since getting the software upgrade is entirely consistent with VDr now being visible in the search engines. Because people can now find us, so they come and visit, and some of those guests then join the forum. In fact there is a nice consistency with the numbers, the increase in new members joining is nicely proportional to the guests online. The figures are also consistent with other forums running VB3, and what we have seen happen here is identical to what happened after VBForums upgraded.

On several occasions recently when searching for an answer I've seen Virtual Dr listed in the results, which is something that I haven't seen for a long time. And that is esxactly what we expected to happen after the upgrade, the serach engine friendliness of the new version make a tremendous difference.