176 Anonymous User(s) and 11 Registered User(s) as of 6:10 pm PT. I find that interesting. Wonder why they don't registered?

I have noted that and wondered the same thing.

I do review the data collected by google analytics. From that, my analysis says that people are interested in surfing with no destination in mind and research on specific issues.

While I would love the see more people engaged in forum discussions, I hesitate to open the forums to responses by anyone that is not registered.

I review over 100 registration requests per day. Of that, there are a couple valid resist rations per week. That keeps spam down.

I am guilty of that, I'll google something like " LS2 performance chip" and half of the responses are forums, so I peruse the forums for info...

Also, from my experience with Google analytics, there are a million robots on every website at some point throughout the day. A good portion of them are advertisers looking for potential clients, and there's Google, and occasionally some faction of the Guberment taking a peek...

Forums are a rich source of information. From google analytics, I can see that the 4x4wire Toyota forums are regularly accessed from other forums. And, many threads are linked to threads in other forums.

I have structured the 4x4wire search function to take advantage of google to search the forums and legacy content prior to othervinternet sources.

4x4wire has a lot of very good content. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/ignore.gif" alt="" />

NICE... (where's the like button?.. LOL)

Where did that come from???

Wel, at least someone is reading...

Yea I'm guilty of not logging in also. I view the forums almost daily, during lunch, but don't normally log in. Guess I'm just lazy, but if it helps your stats I'll make the effort. After all we should always support one-another don't you think?

The important stat is the total number of ad units displayed. It is not dependent on registered vs anonymous users. The advantage of registration (and login) is being able to post. Anyone can read and search the site. You must be registered and logged in to post to the forums.

chpfx, is that your WGSD in your avatar? I've lived with 2 of them. You don't own a WGSD...

Are we making money? If so, I'll have to raise my per post fee by 10%.... Lets see, zero x 1.1, yeah, that will be enough...

Damned spammers ruin it for everyone, ya know?

I started a small forum last year and did alright until this past August, when a couple Ruskie spam bots got past the non-existent phpBB anti-spam features. In a single night, they posted 100+ new threads, each with a pharma spam link, each ended up going out on our Twitter account, as I had an app setup to pass authenticated links out, allowing non-members who follow on Twitter a sneak peek behind the curtain. We lost about half our followers over night. Sonsabitches. Murder. Death. Kill.

Turned out the last update I'd performed on the board - which reported successful - didn't actually complete. I tried a new update, which then took down the entire board. At that point, I did the bare minimum to restore the board before migrating to SMF, which allows me to ask an illogical question to would-be members as part of the registration process. "Have you driven a _ _ _ _ lately?" (fill in the blank)

As for anonymous visitors, I don't think they're all bots. I mean, as long as this place has been around and as immense as the volume of knowledge is behind it, there's probably a good, metric [censored]-ton of keyword SEO in place, pulling in all manner of rock-crawling, mud-slinging, off-roading heathens (and those who aspire to such greatness).

It's unfortunate they don't join us, but the more people here talking about why they do the things they do, how they do them, and what they are, the more likely these passersby on the information superhighway are to take the next exit and venture down the path less traveled. As they say over on DirtyImpreza.com, "Dirt is for racing, tarmac is for getting there." This place has a certain appeal.

You guys built it.
We will come.
Expect us? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />