Answered 7k Traffic Surge : Out of Curiosity

[Yuka Jean]

I was suddenly browsing the forum 2 hours ago and the number of guests + members were around 1,930 something then in a mere moment that status jumped to 7,400 something online users + guests. How is that possible ? The rise in traffic should increase gradually but this appears to be a surge of traffic coming all instantly.

Do you have an explanation for this or know where this sudden surge might come from ?

 

[Checkmate]

I changed how forum counts visitors and guest to better reflect the real traffic.

In the past, this number has to be cut off to the absolute minimum because of performance issue. The forum were not counting the traffic properly, instead prioritizing only 1/4 of the real traffic.

The current number does not represent the real traffic either as the number does not count "cached" traffic (visitor who were served the cached version). So the real number would be anywhere from 1000 to 6000 added to the current number you see.

 

[Yuka Jean]

I changed how forum counts visitors and guest to better reflect the real traffic.

In the past, this number has to be cut off to the absolute minimum because of performance issue. The forum were not counting the traffic properly, instead prioritizing only 1/4 of the real traffic.

The current number does not represent the real traffic either as the number does not count "cached" traffic (visitor who were served the cached version). So the real number would be anywhere from 1000 to 6000 added to the current number you see.

I don't know what to say to this, you modified vbulletin codes ? Mind if you share your Google analytics graph ?

My take is that where would be that surge of sudden traffic coming from ? it is ok even if it is 10k or 15k like you claim but the question is the weird sudden surge, would you know the source ?

 

[Checkmate]

My take is that where would be that surge of sudden traffic coming from ? it is ok even if it is 10k or 15k like you claim but the question is the weird sudden surge, would you know the source ?

There is no "surge", it's just how the forum count the traffic. It has been always this way but you have never seen it before. I switched to the counts in 2011 due to performance reason (hence, the most visitor remain as some 6000 in 2011 until now). No code were modified (not even plugins).

Unfortunately I cannot disclose the graph.

 

[Yuka Jean]

There is no "surge", it's just how the forum count the traffic. It has been always this way but you have never seen it before. I switched to the counts in 2011 due to performance reason (hence, the most visitor remain as some 6000 in 2011 until now)

Unfortunately I cannot disclose the graph.

Well, i am not concern about the claimed constant 6k visitors. What i am concern is the 'surge' and the reason i said this is because it was 1,930 for members + guests then suddenly in a mere moment traffic jumped to 7k+ (almost like a soft ddos) , mind if you explain that sudden jump happening suddenly instead of gradually? If you feel that you can't disclose this or its source, just say so.

 

[Checkmate]

Please carefully read me:

This is not a surge, it was always like this. The reason you see the higher number is because I reverted back to the original method of how the forum counting visitors. Prior to this (the old 2000 for members), I modified how the forum count visitors because of performance reason. See Updates #15 in 2011.

There is no surge, there is no spike in traffic, it's just how forum will count visitor from now on to better reflect the real traffic. This is how AS has always been, it was just not shown to the public before, thus the surprise.