Adventures in website running!

[Robbie]

I just wanted to drop in and give you guys a little backend information about the site. And most of it is thanks to you guys! Most of the time I do this in the Community Leader forum to show them how well they're doing , but this time you all get to play. All of this information is of course courtesy of my ISP's statistics gathering software.

First I wanted to show you all a very pleasing image. This warms my heart.
MONTHLY_bar3d.png

Notice the trend?

And here's a little more up and down...but there's still a positive climb here and its awesome!
WEEKLY_lines3d.png

Now...we have some personal business to discuss. I was looking at the search queries...and I'm kinda worried...I mean I've never declared this site as a family site, but we do tend to maintain some level of clean-ness. Most of these search word queries make sense to me...till we get to # 13...look for yourself.

1.	cartographers guild	862
2.	cartographers	353
3.	cartographer's guild	294
4.	cartographer	268
5.	cartographer guild	253
6.	cartography guild	135
7.	http://www.cartographersguild.com/	84
8.	guild forums	81
9.	cartography forum	68
10.	guild forum	59
11.	guild of cartographers	50
12.	place name generator	49
13.	photoshop sperm filter	36
14.	dungeonforge	36
15.	town name generator	36
16.	campaign cartographer forum	35
17.	fantasy language generator	34
18.	cartographersguild	33
19.	cartographer forum	33
20.	starship deckplans	32

Anybody wanna come clean on that one? Anybody? I mean 36???

Well, thats it for this episode...Thank you all for visiting and keep up the good work!!!

[RobA]

That hit comes from this post:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1466

-Rob A>

[The Cartographist]

Arcana - For those of us who are technically illiterate, can you provide a little more detail? I mean, I can understand the gist, and it is good news. But what exactly is a request? What's the difference between the first and second graph? And where do those search queries come from?

[Robbie]

Wow...What bugs me though is that someone was SEARCHING for a photoshop sperm filter...I can understand that thread being found on that search query...but what bugs me is WHY would someone go to google and type in photoshop sperm filter...The good news is that when you search for it (http://www.google.com/search?q=photoshop+sperm+filter) we're the 4th hit! yay!

As for explaining the above graphs...A request is basically the same as a hit...you type in our url or click a link or go from one page to another page on our site and it registers as a request (a server request to be exact, since you're requesting a file from the server via your browser). The first graph shows an monthly count of requests and how they've grown...and the second one is a weekly breakdown that shows there is som up and down throughout the month, but the general trend is upwards...as in more hits, more requests...more visits to the website. Hope that helps

[Midgardsormr]

Curse you, Arcana! I actually followed that link; just couldn't help it.

Anyway, I thought I'd clarify that server requests indicate how active the users are, but it doesn't necessarily indicate how many unique users there are. Based on my own observations over the past couple of weeks, I suspect that we have Torq to thank for the significant uptick in requests during the month of March.

That isn't to say that the Guild isn't growing rapidly--a glance at the Member Introductions board proves that it is. It's getting to the point where I'm going to have to start being selective about which threads I start reading. It's starting to take a lot of time to keep up with all of them, particularly since some of them are getting really technical. That's not a complaint, by the way; I'm just not quite equipped to parse those messages quickly yet. I need to bone up on my higher math and algorithms.

[pyrandon]

These statistics are telling, but I have always carried out an informal study when I check in for the day here at the Guild: How many people are on the site? I remember not so long ago being happy about 10 being here, then being amazed at 20; now I'm almost used to 30 being in here!

Any growth here is due to the helpful, friendly nature of out site, and all the wonderful people--not to mention wonderfully talented people--who hang about here!

Not the type of people who would search for PS sperm filters, that's for sure!

[su_liam]

Apparently they were looking for me... I'm trying to visualize a sperm filter. AAggh, GOD, I think I did it. Now I have to wash my inner eye out with soap. Preferably lye-based.

[SpamValiant]

I have to admit to being a bit of a beginner with photoshop. Would I regret asking if a sperm filter is used to add or remove said contaminants?

[pyrandon]

In my case, with my poor PS abilities, I wish there was a crap filter vs. a sperm filter...maybe then I wouldn't trash 3/4 of my work!

[Badger]

pyrandon, you sell yourself a little too short on your skills with PS... so quick to compliment everyone that comes thru, but also quick to bash your skills... I think you are a great artist and I've learned more about PS by reading your posts than any other on here... so ... maybe if I had half your skill, then I'd actually complete a map with it...

I also get the sense that you might have just screwed up something you were working on and were releasing your frustration ... if we never made mistakes, we'd never learn anything