With the holidays now behind us, I've been spending time trying to wrap up all the loose ends from 2008. Getting all the records ready for the accountant and looking back over some of the statistics from the site, itself.
The forum statistics are pretty amazing. When we decided to try a T-Bucket discussion forum, we hoped to see 250 members. After 90 days, we had a grand total of 16 members and only 48 posts. On January 13 2007, I posted a thread to announce we were going to close the forum down.
That was then and this is now.
In December 2007, the site really started growing. (I wish I had some recorded numbers from that far back to illustrate how phenomenal the growth has been, but I didn't start recording some numbers until March 2008.)
From October 2007 to December 2007, the total number of hits per month the site was getting doubled. January 2008 was nearly double December 2007. And March 2008 doubled the January number. And in April 2008, I was excited because we had finally seen more than a million hits in a single month.
Let me share with you that December of 2008 had 1.79 million more hits than we had in January 2008. Had December 2008 been just 6-7 days longer, the monthly hit count would have DOUBLED the 2007 total.
The number of unique visitors the site sees each month better than tripled from January 2008 to December 2008. The unique visitor count for December 2008 was 77.7% of the 2007 total!
Here are some number comparisons between March 20 2008 and today -
At the end of last March we had 637 threads. Today we have 2,428.
We had 5,943 posts back then. The number this morning was at 23,939 and climbing.
We had 362 members back then. This morning we had 936 members. (And I purged some 45-55 unconfirmed accounts from the database, a couple months back.)
When we started this forum, we were hosted on a shared hosting account with a perfectly awful host. In early 2008, we moved to another host's shared hosting and then it became obvious we were going to need more room than that. So we moved to a Virtual Private Server with KnownHost. And I've increased the available RAM on the server since then. At our present rate of growth, I'll need to upgrade to a larger VPS account, as we're out-growing this one already.
2008 saw several members of the forum demonstrating their generosity by making donations to help offset the forum operating expenses. And we took another big step by having forum T-shirts designed and made up. We also had our logo designed by a shop that can embroider them on jackets and caps. Sales of the shirts, caps and jackets have been pretty dismal to this point, but that was about the only downer we experienced through 2008. So don't forget to visit the forum store to help us unload some of these stacks of T-shirts - T-Bucket Forums Store (Powered by CubeCart)
And we're already looking forward to 2009 with some new ideas. (Shhhh, don't tell anyone, but B.C., RPM and myself are plotting together on a little something special. Remember, for now this is a secret, so keep it hush-hush.)
I reckon we'll just keep the site up and running a while longer, since ya'll seem to be having a good time. Thanks to all of you for making your forum what it is today!
The forum statistics are pretty amazing. When we decided to try a T-Bucket discussion forum, we hoped to see 250 members. After 90 days, we had a grand total of 16 members and only 48 posts. On January 13 2007, I posted a thread to announce we were going to close the forum down.
That was then and this is now.
In December 2007, the site really started growing. (I wish I had some recorded numbers from that far back to illustrate how phenomenal the growth has been, but I didn't start recording some numbers until March 2008.)
From October 2007 to December 2007, the total number of hits per month the site was getting doubled. January 2008 was nearly double December 2007. And March 2008 doubled the January number. And in April 2008, I was excited because we had finally seen more than a million hits in a single month.
Let me share with you that December of 2008 had 1.79 million more hits than we had in January 2008. Had December 2008 been just 6-7 days longer, the monthly hit count would have DOUBLED the 2007 total.
The number of unique visitors the site sees each month better than tripled from January 2008 to December 2008. The unique visitor count for December 2008 was 77.7% of the 2007 total!
Here are some number comparisons between March 20 2008 and today -
At the end of last March we had 637 threads. Today we have 2,428.
We had 5,943 posts back then. The number this morning was at 23,939 and climbing.
We had 362 members back then. This morning we had 936 members. (And I purged some 45-55 unconfirmed accounts from the database, a couple months back.)
When we started this forum, we were hosted on a shared hosting account with a perfectly awful host. In early 2008, we moved to another host's shared hosting and then it became obvious we were going to need more room than that. So we moved to a Virtual Private Server with KnownHost. And I've increased the available RAM on the server since then. At our present rate of growth, I'll need to upgrade to a larger VPS account, as we're out-growing this one already.
2008 saw several members of the forum demonstrating their generosity by making donations to help offset the forum operating expenses. And we took another big step by having forum T-shirts designed and made up. We also had our logo designed by a shop that can embroider them on jackets and caps. Sales of the shirts, caps and jackets have been pretty dismal to this point, but that was about the only downer we experienced through 2008. So don't forget to visit the forum store to help us unload some of these stacks of T-shirts - T-Bucket Forums Store (Powered by CubeCart)
And we're already looking forward to 2009 with some new ideas. (Shhhh, don't tell anyone, but B.C., RPM and myself are plotting together on a little something special. Remember, for now this is a secret, so keep it hush-hush.)
I reckon we'll just keep the site up and running a while longer, since ya'll seem to be having a good time. Thanks to all of you for making your forum what it is today!
