Most visitors

[tequila girl]

Most users ever online was 415, Yesterday at 08:05 PM

[EagleLady]

Um, What is the point of this thread?

[tequila girl]

Sorry, I just thought people might find it an interesting fact!

[Eve]

How many were members and how many were guests?

I always find it interesting to see how many visitors are on line. Many were probably spiders. There are not all that many active posters here unless all the people that have registered years ago and have never posted decided to show up all at once.

[whitcap]

I think its an interesting fact TG

It was probably mostly guests. The most users I've seen online lately was 15 or 20 but I don't know about yesterday cause I wasn't on when the record was set (1:05 pm my time).

[Ive always been a dreamer]

I’m guessing that many of those users were indeed web crawlers, spiders, or bots (web robots) as I call them. It is a very common thing for bots to visit message boards. This is how search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo gather data with regard to internet activity and analyze it to rank websites. Even though it’s not an accurate reflection of how many humans users were online, it is a reflection of the board’s activity level in that the more active the board is, the more bots are likely to visit. In other words, if you don’t have bots visiting your board then it probably means your site isn’t getting a lot of activity. So, at least in that respect, I think it’s kinda cool.

Right now, as happens every year, the board is pretty slow because of the holiday season and most people are just too busy to visit or post. Speaking for myself, I have been trying to pop in periodically each day, but my time here has been very limited. It's too bad when, to paraphrase Don, the world gets in my way and interferes with my board time.

[GlennLover]

I find it interesting too! Glad that the Border gets so many hits, a lot of them have to be human! I often check out that statistic when I sign in.

I lurked for about a year & finally joined when it was announced that the Eagles were coming to a city that was close. I didn't think that I had enough knowledge of the band, but I decided that point time was a good time to register as I wanted to discuss my experience & could see that the regulars were very friendly. I'm sooo glad that I did & gained such wonderful cyber-friends!

[MikeA]

Hmmm, I joined and immediately displayed the classic characteristics of a Ratchet Jaw! Kinda spooky thinking that there are thousands reading the drivel I sometimes post <LOL>

[sodascouts]

Yep, most of those are web crawlers for search engines. We get crawled a lot due to the fact that we have new substantive posts on here pretty much every day. Such crawling gives the board a better position in the results when someone is doing a search, so it's not only a result of our activity, it helps increase our visibility.

It's hard to say precisely how many of our visitors are human, but I once read a statistic that 90% of the people who read message boards never post nor join. It's just the nature of internet communities. I think we are typical in that regard.

Speaking for myself, I didn't become a regular message board user until 2001 when I joined the Fleetwood Mac forum called The Ledge. I had been a big Fleetwood Mac fan since 1998 and had read the message board for a while, but I was nervous about doing something wrong, so I hesitated to join. I didn't register to be a member until Stevie Nicks started her 2001 tour and I wanted to ask about shows. It didn't take me long to get used to the water, though! A year later I started my own FM board and was regularly posting on both, plus posting on a couple other Mac boards to boot (posting on multiple boards is commonplace in the Fleetwood Mac fan community - as a result, several boards thrive). Then, of course, I created my Eagles board in 2005, and here we are!

[Freypower]

The thing with message boards is you don't always know how you will fit in. I joined the Mark Knopfler board a couple of years back & I found the knowledge of the members very impressive, but also very intimidating. They could tell when he played a different note in a different song on any given night. They had been to many, many more shows than I have (I saw him twice with Dire Straits & have only seen him once on his own). I felt that much as I love that man I didn't belong there. I keep meaning to have a look at it again & try again. Here, however, I do fit in because although we have our technical experts to whom I bow my head in awe (they know who they are), we are more of an unashamed 'fan' site.