Forum traffic decline - or my bad maths

[rmangroo]

Hello -I am a new member and although hopefully not an anorak I do have some interest and considerable experience in the interpretation of statistics. These are peculiar times effecting so much of what we do in an unprecedented and unpredictable way. Because of this I suggest the meaningful comparison we should be making is not between forum traffic this year v. last year, but how our usage trends compare with other similar clubs over this peculiar period. As a starter I saw a recent post on my classic boat forum entitled 'Death Of The Forum' in which the writer bemoans the radical decline in traffic, reducing a usually busy platform to a quiet place with few contributions even from the usual stalwarts. The forum for my other classic car club also has noticeably less traffic. So the question is:- are we performing badly v. last year or well v. other clubs - or anywhere in between?

Derek S

A very good question. Karan spend a lot of time on both BMW and JOC forum mainly browsing and searching for questions already answered but can't say if he's seen any decline or increase in either. I've seen the decline in some social media pages I follow and from what I can gather If you're not selling something there is not a lot being posted.

Raj

[zacmarshall]

The ones in Grant's signature I copied to the JOC site, so they are now on an https site with a valid certificate.

Grant was going to let me have the others he used so I could also copy those to the JOC site.

I get lots of pop ups from Bitdefender complaining about the smilies being on http from an https site which makes the forum almost unusable.

All the ones in your signature work perfectly Grant in Firefox and Chrome on a Mac!

The one I quoted in the post above, even the quoted version works in Firefox on Mac, but not in Chrome on Mac. The ones that start with https: in preview are the ones that give trouble. Removing the "s" after http doesn't fix it, but it does change the appearance slightly.

[kees]

You have to view the figures over a longer period e.g. one year to make up your conclusions.
OK, not everybody gets it on a silver platter and it may be a bit more involved for some to get on to the forum, but in the end, after a few tries, you will get there. Not really a reason for moaning about and for not using the forum.
After some time these niggles will be sorted. That is always the way when things change. Lets face it, I do not like these changes either but if nothing would have changed there would not have been any progress in the world, let alone this forum.

[Kevin Birch]

As many of you know I'm a regular, and my posts have declined, purely as there is nothing new going on, due to lockdown. I have been steadily pootling about in the garage, doing bits on all 4 of my cars, but nothing really drastic to report, and certainly no events have been attended.
The new forum is a little different, I don't see Grant's emogies anymore just a square sating image in it,(I don't know if this could be looked at), but now got used to any changes. It has reminded me that we changed our radio system at work a number of years ago, from analogue to a digital system. Although the handsets looked the same the whole back end was different and operated differently but was a vast improvement. The issue we had was that a few things on the way it operated was different, and people complained that it was worse than the old system, but after a number of months people got used to it. If we had not had an old radio system and started from scratch, everybody would have said how wonderful the new system is , having not had a comparison. Just a fact of life, people are uncomfortable with change.

Hopefully the light has been switched on at the end of the tunnel and we will start to get out in our cars and have things to report, like breakdowns and component failures, that none of us are actually experiencing at the moment.
Still a good Forum, and club, and well done all who have put their effort in keeping it so.

[shaun]

Thanks Kev,

Need a hair cut? I do!

[Kevin Birch]

Shaun, my hair is longer than it has ever been, didn't have it cut last year, and is probably as long as Alan Jones' at the moment. Having to tie it up when doing any work as it just gets in the way

[shaun]

Brilliant!!!!

See, owning a Jensen promotes hair growth!!

Not sure where though!!!

[zacmarshall]

I don't see Grant's emogies anymore just a square sating image in it,(I don't know if this could be looked at)

They should magically reappear in the morning

[Grant]

I don't see Grant's emogies anymore just a square sating image in it,(I don't know if this could be looked at)

They should magically reappear in the morning

Brilliant

[zacmarshall]

I have now amended Grant's posts which had the non secure Emojis and replaced the links with secure versions, so they should now appear and the annoying pop ups for people using Bitdefender should stop.

[Mark1Stu]

Well done Zac. Your perseverance is an inspiration.

[Kevin Birch]

Well done Zac, I can now see them if I move my hair from in front of my eyes

[Eddie]

Ironically, this topic is quite an active one

[RAP72]

I have been following this in the background because the stats counter on the mk1 site stopped with the change over. All sorted now as I realised I had to change the address on the stat counter app I use to the new hppts web address. But back to the traffic comment I thought that the numbers on this website had increased since the change - only because I look at the 'users on line' at the bottom of each page and often there are about 10 times the visitors as there are 'signed up members'.

edit as I submit this "Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], carefree, Google [Bot], RAP72 and 21 guests"

[VFK44]

Thanks Zac for bringing back Grant's emojis.

Doesn't matter what else happens now, I feel that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.