Monthly Report: February 2006
Horrors! Another month has gone by, and that means that to my eternal dismay (well, actually, to my monthly dismay), it’s time for another stats-laden, quip-heavy, self-important report on how the site is doing!
Read on for a glimpse into the depravity of Internet searchers! Marvel at the increasing traffic and bandwidth bill! Be shocked by what posts people cared about! Visit our new exhibit on feed readers, and discover how feeds bite the hands that feed them, but feed on other things! All this and more, for the low, low price of a single clickthrough!
In December, there were around 12,000 suckers coming into the tent. Last month, I reported not quite 20,000. I am pleased to announce that in the short month of February, almost 25,000 unique visitors made their way here — typically, 3600 a day. In the antiquated nomenclature of “hits” that we inherited from the dot-com days, that’s around 1.5m hits.
Without question, the most impressive day was the 28th, the very last day of the month. That would be because the inexplicably popular Lessons of MMORPGs was apparently reprinted on every forum on the Internet. This quadrupled typical traffic that day, as 10,667 rubberneckers stopped by to see the resultant trainwreck of trackbacks ruin the comments thread.
How many more readers until I have to upgrade my hosting package? Well, fortunately, February accounted for less traffic (only around 15 gigs transferred) than January did (21 gigs!).
Unfortunately, I’ve used 4.71gig in the last two days. That’s what getting BoingBoinged twice in rapid succession does, I guess.
Where is the bandwidth going? Mostly to the US, followed by Canada, Australia, the EU, and the UK. But hey, even Finland accounted for 1840 hits!
The campaign to get people to listen to the music on the site has made marginal progress. If you recall, last month only 328 of you even saw the little Flash plug-in that plays the tunes. This month, 1441 of you did. 59 people clicked on the mp3s, though: 36 listening to “Bicycles in January” and 18 to that sonata-like thing..
Most popular pages on the site this month:
- Small Worlds (up from #3)
- The Laws of Online World Design (holding at #2)
- The Online Worlds Timeline (up one spot from #3)
- About Raph which still sucks and needs rewritten, but is up from #7.
- Online World Design Patterns up from #10
- Running Massively Multiplayer Games slipping from #5
- Moore’s Wall, down from #1.
- Declaring the Rights of Players jumping back onto the charts!
- What Does It Take to Make a Successful Persistent Online World (holding at #9)
- How to Manage a Large-Scale Online Gaming Community slipping from #6.
The Destiny of Online Worlds fell off the top ten, landing at #11. How the mighty have fallen… Hmm, I need to get those little red and green triangle icons for that.
The loneliest pages on the site, down at the back of the whole circus: Roleplay-required? and Why I Make Muds, both visited by probably the same 8 people.
The most popular post prediction I made last month (that OGLE would not be dethroned until the heat-death of the universe) was proven wrong by not only the plucky Do levels suck? but of course by the unintentional black hole created by those lessons. To my utter shock, whereas OGLE pulled in 5000 people in the space of a week, the lessons pulled in 20,000 people in the space of three days. I must therefore revise my estimates of what attracts the punters: clearly, it’s cute aphorisms that tickle the funny bone. It’s looking bad for the complex design essays with graphs, people.
That said, Kristen and I have been talking about removing the Top 10 thing from the sidebar, because it’s kind of self-reinforcing. Instead, we might replace it with a “key things you ought to read” list. Opinions? If so, what ought to be on it?
In any case, for posterity’s sake, the most popular posts right now are:
- What are the lessons of MMORPGs today? (20017) (ack ack ack)
- Do levels suck? (6475)
- OGLE (6154)
- Where does popularity come from, or the Wisdom of Crowds revisited (5354)
- Do levels suck? Part II (4383) (I guess people can live without seeing the ending).
- A guild trademarks its name (3493)
- The evil we pretend to do (3083)
- Are single-player games doomed? (2971)
- Briefly noted: Dave Duncan, Sharon Shinn (2767) (Why is this on the top ten? One of the great mysteries of the universe.)
- Forcing interaction (2504)
Alas, that means that four noble warriors fell off the top ten, and will now be lost in the obscurity of the archives, including The Future of Content (down to #18 in the all-time list) and Innovation, evolution, and adaptation down to #16.
We recently changed feeds to direct through FeedBurner, which lets us datamine a whole bunch of nifty stats. You may have noticed the little counter over on the left telling you how many folks read the feed yesterday — expect it to bounce around, since not everyone reads feeds every day. It’s been on a steady rise, and the current official tally is 463. Most of those folks use BlogLines, which alas, seems to have split into four or sometimes five separate feeds. After that comes Firefox Live Bookmarks, Google Desktop, NetNewsWire for the Mac, the generic Apple CFNetwork client (which usually means the OS X screensaver), Thunderbird, and NewsGator. There’s an additional 132 who hit the feed with a browser manually.
Naturally, the biggest conversation resulted from the Lessons post again.
- What are the lessons of MMORPGs today?
- What is your ideal MMO?
- Are single-player games doomed?
- Dave Sirlin rips WoW
- A guild trademarks its name
- Is the shift to online a fad?
- Rep systems
- A side note: trust, convention, and guild trademarks
- Shaping Games
- On Trust (part I)
Who’s on what browser? Well, last month, it was much closer. Probably because of the wider audience, IE has pulled ahead to 44.1%, versus Firefox’s 41.5%. Oh, and 7.3% of you are on Macs, which is a bit more than before, but I think we’ve seen a definite rise in the number of people on Solaris. (Why? Got me!)
What sites are to blame for your appearance at my door?
- BoingBoing
- BlogLines
- Steve Jackson Games (he plugged both the Lessons and A Theory of Fun on the Illuminator. 🙂
- WoW Insider (because of the whole guild trademark thing)
- Broken Toys, Lum’s haunt
- Shacknews, which I’m sure was mean to me!
- GU Comics, about which I don’t need to speculate — they were mean.
- The SWG forums
- del.icio.us
- The Escapist Magazine blog
And now for everyone’s favorite: search engine terms! Step right up, ladies and gents!
First, the warm-up act: searches using the site’s search engine featured fascinating keywords such as
- “UO what went wrong” (to get the answers, you need to give me free beer);
- “took my skies” — a lament for Joss Whedon’s Firefly perhaps?
- “japanese rpgs”, which lamentably, I don’t cover on this site
- “morrowind curry” — can you cook in Morrowind? I didn’t even know that.
- “deindividualization” and “emergent norms”… yipes, how geeky do they think I am?
- “zahnarzt”. I got nothin’.
- “if there be sorrow”. There almost certainly be, somewhere. After all somewhere on the planet, a sparrow is falling to the ground.
- “beatnik turtle”. I want a picture of him. Cute little black beret and stuff.
- “game eaters.” Personally, I find the CDs kinda crunchy, but I hear if you make them into a curry it works better.
- “priests niche.” What, they couldn’t afford a whole hole?
- “mahagonibaum.” Hey, Maha, meet Zahnarzt.
And now, the main event! Direct from the darkest reaches of the Internet, the search terms thrown up by Google that somehow, magically, inexplicably led here!
12% of the time, it was my name. That’s actually reassuring.
- dressing games. Aren’t they cute in their little sweaters?
- jogo do pinguim. I didn’t know penguins spoke Portuguese.
- what does my name mean and where does it come from. First, you need to tell me your name.
- playmate february 2006. With penguins.
- thermohaline shift. I’m pleased that my blog and website can lead to increased discussion of this important climate issue, which may well result in a massive drop in temperature in Europe, should the Gulf Stream be diverted from its usual course by increased melt from Greenland’s ice cap, causing a change in the salinity of the ocean. Sounds like a perfect thing to model in Second Life.
- the hairy toe poem. And people said that the Sunday Poems were a waste of time! This one of course is referring to thgis one.
- black dutch with light brown eyes… and this one isn’t.
- mundo park de juegos de cocodrilo. Penguins AND alligators. Clearly, my feeble attempts at branding and character design for the book are paying off.
- the enlighened despots. Yeah, that’s all us MMO admins. 🙂
- star wars galaxies raph koster leaves soe. No, still here.
- history of pool game marco polo. If you find out, let me know, ’cause it must be really fascinating trivia.
- green eyed quadroons. Do they need to be Dutch too?
- chuck brodsky blow me away tab. Dammit, I told you last month!!
- multiplayer world fun online like penguin chat. With alligators?
- zahnarztsimulator. To which I can only say, “mahagonibaum.”
- guns don t kill people jack bauer does. Well, to be fair, sometimes the terrorists do. With Centox gas.
- toutes les poesies sur les grenouilles, parce que les grenouilles sont tres jolie. (And by the way, may I mention that this hit makes Google’s search engine even more impressive to me).
- raph koster aberration. That’s a personal question.
- gemido. Whimper? (That’s what it means).
- what to do when someone accused of something you did not do. Tell the truth. Honesty is the best policy.
- pretend to be me. OK, let’s go over this whole role-playing game concept again…
- jack bauer s gun 24. His gun has a website? Wow.
- heartless blog. Snif. Meanie.
- jack bauer wasn t addicted to heroin. Yes, he was. He admitted it in both season 4, and in the pilot episode for season 5. He also had withdrawal symptoms that thankfully cleared up in 20 minutes.
- timeline for the word redneck. Probably not as interesting trivia as the Marco Polo one.
- deconstructionism in music analysis. Grad school will never let me go.
- you and me baby ain t nothing but mammals so lets do it like they do on the discovery channel. Oh yeah.
- where does the guitar come from? Well, it’s descended from the zither.
- an essay about a grocery item useful for a future lifestyle. Why do I think someone is trying to get out of doing homework?
- what gauge strings for my blue ridge guitar. Really up to you, but I use medium gauge Elixir strings.
- virtual reality game build and own a coffee house. Starbucks Online?
- playmate march 2005. She’s with the alligators.
- first edition 1st d&d experience progression level cleric
Uh, sad to say, I actually have the book to hand. By level:
- 0-1500 – Acolyte
- 1501-3000 – Adept
- 3001-6000 – Priest
- 6001-13000 – Curate
- 13001-27500 – Curate (still)
- 27501-55000 – Canon
- 55001-110000 – Lama
- 110001-225000 – Patriarch
- 225001-450000 – High Priest
- 450001-675000 – 10th level High Priest
- 675001-900000 – 11th level High Priest
- + : 225000 xp per level beyond 11th.
Don’t forget to claim your 2 hp per level after 9th level!
27 Responses to “Monthly Report: February 2006”
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I love site stats, they always net (get it, net!) some great material and some generally weird stuff. At Gamers With Jobs we have an annual “Welcome Perverts!” article where Elysium details all the deprived search words that somehow end up at the site. Perhaps I’m tooting my own horn here, but they are hilarious.
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/19214
Keep up the great work Raph, your insight and writing is always highly worthwhile to me. 🙂
For what it’s worth, a Zahnarzt is a “tooth doctor” or dentist (so presumably a Zahnarztsimulator is a simulation of being a dentist — I presume that came from your link to Patrick Curry’s site). A Mahagonibaum would be a Mahogany tree of course. 🙂
Yes, German is an odd language.
What do you use to measure hits and visitors, Raph? Do you have a standard stats parser you use, or something custom?
I never get anything interesting in the search engines. Best I ever got was “elephant f*ckers” (uncensored) pointing to my blog. 😛 Uh, yay?
Have fun,
[…] Comments […]
Stealing my hits!!! Its on now Raph o_O
Congratulations, Raph, on a thriving online community.
Oh, and the “Why I make MUDS” link is broken for me.
[…] which Raph replied “Snif. Meanie.”So I must concluce that Raph is paying Google to steal my hits. [ # posted by Heartless_ @ 6:53 AM] [ 0 comments ] [ Post a Comment ] [ Home ] varsite=”sm9hgamer” […]
Thanks, Tuebit. Fixed in the post and you can juck click here instead of trying to find it up there again. =)
I don’t suppose there’s any way to seperate the trackbacks from actual comments? Nothing like reading through some great stuff then get smacked by 3 or 4 trackbacks in a row…
I’ve been wondering the same thing. All I can think of:
1. We could get rid of trackbacks, but I find them very useful, and (believe it or not) I follow them all to see what’s being said.
2. We could try hacking the PHP so they don’t appear here, but on some other page.
As it is, the Technorati ones, the Kramer ones, and the WordPress ones all behave differently. 🙁 Some show as “recent trackbacks” and some don’t; some show up as recent comments and some don’t.
After looking at the php this morning for something different, I think we might be able to have it spit out all of one type and then the other(s)…
It might slow things down a bit as it would have to go through the loop twice or three times instead of just once to do that… but it’s something I can definitely research and look into. It’s been bugging me too. 🙂
That’d be sweet. Comments on top, trackbacks after?
Or perhaps leave the trackbacks where they are but minimized to a one-liner such as “trackback-kotaku” and a link?
Whatever works, of course. Thanks for looking into it 🙂
I’m not sure. I was thinking comments should go at the bottom so you could just hit “end” to get to the bottom for the most recent ones and the “Leave a Reply” box. But, Raph’ll probably complain if he checks it on his blackberry. 😛
We’ve been trying to go through the really long ones that quote the entire post back and trying to chop them down to something reasonable, yet representative. But yeah, we can also check and see if there’s a way to limit the quoted text (would certainly make our lives easier. 🙂
I think most sites put trackbacks first, comments second.
Here’s a wacky notion — we could put trackbacks in the sidebar on the post pages, too. I have no idea where, though.
Ok. I THINK I got it… if anyone notices any problems, please yell! 🙂
I also fixed a couple of other little things that had been bugging me, but they’re likely transparent to y’all.
Anyway, apologies to anyone who was trying to read/comment as I fiddled with that. I tried to minimize the impact.
My hosting package comes with Awstats, Analog, Webalizer, and a couple of others. They often do not quite match (Awstats seems to be more conservative in its numbers — when I graph them, they have exactly the same curves, but Awstats consistently reports lower). I use the Awstats figures, mostly, for these reports. Awstats is also what gives the search terms.
Just went back through the healing comments, and it looks much better this way. Thanks for the changes 🙂
You’re quite welcome! Glad you like it.
We made a bunch of other little tweaks here and there to improve consistency and hopefully improve visual distinction. So far I haven’t run into any problems as I’ve been checking things around the site. *fingers crossed*
Except for the icons on posts not showing up in IE for Windows. 😛
1) IE sucks.
2) The icons aren’t really that important. I don’t even know how to use them. =P
But *cough*IE is teh SUX*cough* 😛
Anyway… I’ll look into that next. I suspect it’s the same stupid stacking issue as before with the images in things like the Moore’s wall presentation.
They don’t do anything. 🙂 All they do is mark what sort of post it is: books, music, games, writing, etc.
Oh, those icons. I thought you meant the smiley faces. Don’t you have tags/categories/keywords/whatever they call it nowadays for that?
The icon isn’t showing up because IE isn’t properly applying the margin-left property, or something. If you strip out the excess HTML, you’ll see that it’s flush with the left edge of the screen.
If I come up with a fix before I go to bed, I’ll post that, too. But that’s your problem. ^_^
Yeah… as soon as I started actually fiddling around with it, I suddenly remembered (one of the many) valid reason(s) I hate IE. I was fiddling with webdesign earlier this quarter and couldn’t figure out how to make it work with both IE and Firefox, because of the margin-left problem.
Anyways, this is a little messy, but it works. At least using IE Tab. =P
Change this:
<td><img src=”https://www.raphkoster.com/images/bullet2.gif” height=”41″ width=”41″ alt=”Books)” /></td>
to this:
<td style=”background: url(‘https://www.raphkoster.com/images/bullet2.gif’); width: 41px; height: 41px”></td>
I’d also suggest using the “title” attribute on images, but that’s just because I think it’s a cool effect.
To use the smileys just use regular emoticons so : ) [with no space between] automatically becomes 🙂 I tend to use an = for the “eyes” so I have to remember to type the colon to get the little yellow guy to show up.
Ok on to the evilness of IE.
I tried what you suggested but all that seemed to do was move the Post Title and date over to the margin of the center content in both IE and Firefox with no image column.
I had a little more success futzing with z-index values, but all I managed to do there was get one of the icons to appear on the far left margin of the window, completely out of synch with where it should have been vertically. Doing this didn’t seem to affect Firefox’s display, but it didn’t gain me anything useful in IE either, so I backed everything out for now.
It’s weird. I can click where the post icon SHOULD be in IE and I get a pretty little blue box, and I can even copy it and paste it and get the correct icon, so I suspect it’s a layering issue, not a margin issue.
Have I mentioned I hate IE? *grin*
[…] Key stats: March saw over 2.2 million hits, in 152,000 visits. Almost 1.7m files served on 389,000 pages, for 28 gigs of bandwidth. Each day averaged 4925 visitors, and a bit over 71,000 hits. For comparison, December only had around 700,000 hits total. Basically, across the board, every metric I have shows that the site is 150% more popular than it was the month prior. […]