32,000 hits a day, no new members?

To whom this may concern,

 I’m wondering why am I getting over 32,000 hits a day on average, 1,212,111 hits to date, been up and running for 8 weeks now. I have only 20 members who have joined my site and most all of them are friends of mine. My site is a free online community. I have posted advertisement on everything that I could think of on the internet. (facebook, Twitter) as an example.  I just can't understand why no one is joining my website. Here is a link to it, if anyone can give me some ideas in getting people to join. Thank you!

Link: http://mypad-yourpad.com

Have you thought about a splash page perhaps, or slimming down your homepage a little? At the moment it's unclear what your site is/does and it's very confusing on the eye. Simplicity is the way forward! Even thought your join link is a site-wide banner, it's not an obvious button... it merely looks like a header which might have a 'reasons to join' below it.

How in earth do you manage to get so many hits? :-)

I advertised a lot as well, free ads not paid. And only locally in the Netherlands

I suspect if jagsinc1 checks his access logs he may find site search bots scanning his site - especially if he has most of the content visible to guests. 32,000 is still a lot. Are they all coming from a specific ip, or source/country? The site looks pretty confusing for a first time visitor.

i dont count bots as a hit .. well it is a hit, but not a real hit. if you know what i mean :-)

Dude!! your site is crucial on the eyes my friend. I wear glasses and had to take them off for a minute to refocus my vision. I like the idea you are going for but you site is saying too much at first. Simplicity is the key.

Also your Facebook login doesn't work:

And all your footer links ( about us privacy terms faq ) reference the Dolphin community (the original unaltered files). All these changes along with simplifying the first page (at least) will encourage your 32,000 daily visitors to consider joining. You should install Google Analytics and monitor the bounce rate among other crucial data.

Hi all, I some how lost last my reply that I was writing about so here goes again. 

I downsized the front page so far. My hits have been global as far as 15 countries. Hits have been from Facebook, Twitter as an example. I have hits from all over the country as well (USA).

I do have search bots, but mostly Google, Yahoo and some web submits. All advertisement that I have done have been free. 

I did have 2 members tell me that the site was a bit confusing so I made some changes to those comments. 

What I have done to the site was make it in some respect like AOL use to be, Myspace and Facebook, if you know what I mean?

Thanks much for the replies by the way!

Keep slimming it down and get it to be as simple as possible - imagine you're a first time user.

your site definitely needs to be edited - you have too many font colors - pink green, yellow, red, brown, white, dark - you must kjeep text color on text in same colorur and in some readable one, also some text in yeloow font color is too small I cant read it.. Also remove that ugly logo image on top - it only disturb your site design. Also red text on top left side  looks bad - take it out...just my 5 cents   ...ah forgot on one thing dont use too much uánderlined text there it doesnt look good either

On a very subjective note, if you want the site to be 'the place to be seen', 'the next big thing' etc you might want to update your YouTube promo video a little :)

I'm not sure how to change anything on the footer links. I have not purchase a license yet in which would cost $99.00 that I really don't have at the moment. Been unemployed 2 years now, so my idea is to make money from business advertisement. That's why I have a few on the front page.

I'm not sure what this is? I seen the mod for facebook, but not sure what to do with it and how? I haven't been doing this long, meaning this type of website. I use to use Frontpage many years ago so this is very new to me. I'm not getting any younger ... lol

Thanks!

The MTools Page Editor (available free in Market) will allow you to easily edit the content of the 'about' 'faq' etc links. These are not attached to a Dolphin license. 

Your Facebook API details should be input in Modules -> Facebook Connect. There are instructions at the top of the page about how you can go about acquiring your Facebook "API Key" and "App Secret" strings.

Wow, okay all, I have to take a break now. My wife is ready for me to pick her up at work in an hour. lol

 I am very greatful for everyones help!

Thanks very much!

Ciao ***

Are you talking about hits as opposed to visits?

I have 310 Active members, of which between 12-30 are online during normal waking hours. I have the Simple Messenger bar, and chat room, and my site usually shows about 800 000 hits a day and 450 unique visitors.

800,000 hits a day from 450 visitors?

Mmmm. Yes. I think its the Simple Messenger or Flash Chat modules that do it - theres a lot of AJAX calls. I'm not sure if AWStats also count hits on image files, JS files etc. I jsut put that there because I think the OP is concerned that he has loads of hits for not many visitors....I just put down my raw figures to reassure him that his figures are within the normal range for that number of members.

I think you should install Google Analytics for some more realistic values. It was a good idea though to reassure the OP about high numbers if his stats are counting things like every single message sent using the simple messenger as one hit. 1777 page views per user, on your site, per day is very unlikely.

No, I dont believe its likely either. I don't believe the hit counter, as I say I just posted it to show the OP that hits arent everything. I wouldnt let Google see my site stats!

Thats a weeks worth.

I also have short_profile_info.php giving out 17000 hits, but I think thats a real page associated with one of Antons Mods.

Then use PIWIK .. its free and works almost the same as google analytics

I am using it, and loving it.. i also dont want google to see my stats

Forget the getting members to join as a priority, I cant see any content on your site at the moment!

Articles, Sounds, Events, News all empty..

Only thing I can see there is the 12 'youpad' videos, and 3 videos from youtube, each with 1 single view.

No one will register to join a site if it has zero content.

the bright fonts on black background dont do it any visual favors either. Would advise toning it down a little.

Content is priority first though!

for traffic information try this site, you can't beat the results

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mypad-yourpad.com

where are you pulling your stats from?

check this site too for future stats.. I think there useful

http://www.cubestat.com/www.mypad-yourpad.com

i would think you would get some results like this

http://www.cubestat.com/www.duvallocals.info

i don't think your "stats" or page can stay "hidden"

how would you be found..

i was talking about google analytics .. google knows and see's a lot. and if i can use smth else than google analytics, it sure has my preference.

Articles, Sounds, Events, News all empty,

daihlo  =  I do have sounds/music already installed on the site as well as music videos. Not all are being used as of this time. As for the rest, I am not placing any just yet.

To everyone else=  I've been getting my stats from my hosting provider as well as other areas that I have signed up with and all read just about the same.

8 weeks running, 1,247,438 hits to date,  this month only 723,222

Almost 5,000 visits

I'm still working on the site, revising many of the details that was mention here. I added a new logo as well.  Wow, this sure seems like a lot of work ... lol

Thank you all for your help!

all i can say is i wish i was getting that many hits and visits that early on in my website.

one thing i must definitely bring up on my first visit to your site is the login is squished. You have made the column too small for that side, perhaps make it bigger.

and yes, running a site is a lot of work, but once it all pays off, it is worth it =)

Slightly off topic...

Your 'rolling' promo, where did you get that from?

Thanks,

Stuart

RE:

32,000 hits doesn't really mean much.  I can create that many just by leaving the browser parked on a page that has a shoutbox, or a chat room.  This is one of the dumb things that Dolphin does.... the shoutbox or messenger will continually request an xml file, even if there is no user activity on the client side.  They could save a lot of "hits" by putting these xml file hogs in a sleep mode when there has been no client side activity for 20 minutyes or so.

oh SNAP

Stuart038 = I purchase the templete here   http://dolphintemplate.com/category/templates/

Lemonhunter = there is a lot you can do if you have not done so yet by way of advertisement of your site. One thing for sure is to fine college websites and if there is a place to post, do it. I have a few that I post on.  There are many places to where you can post your site for free, too many to list. Go for it!

houstonlively = the hits keep on coming .... I'm think about what everyone has mention here and it may just be true to it all. It's a lot of hits for so little time running this site of mine. There have been as of yesterday 15 countries who have hit my site, I have gotten a bit less last month, Today totals are coming from  23 countries. Holy Crap! ... lol

Thank you all for your input / comments, I never thought that I would get this much replies to this subject, It's all helping!

I'm trying to tell you that a "Hit" doesn't mean much.  It's a practically useless statistic, other than telling you what the resource hogs on your site may be.  A 'Hit' is simple an object being loaded by a browser, and it includes html, php, js, css, and image files, to name a few.  Just loading the front page of a Dolphin site will create several hundred hits.

Pay more attention to 'Unique Visitors' .... it's a more meaningful statistic.  One visitor to a Dolphin site can easily generate '32,000 hits', so don't get too excited about it.

LOL...pretty funny post. I would recommend you redo some of your website...say about from the promo banner down. That's pretty much all of it. It's way too hard to read, colors are bad and the youtube video is rather unappealing. Concept is great...your eagerness to learn is great....just listen to the ones who answer you in the forum here such as HL. he has been around since the invention of the keyboard and knows quite a bit. I think you will get your site running with your members....it takes time. And remember...everyone has a social networking site these days....its what yours offers thats different is what will bring the people to you.

this is what HL means by "unique visitors" [edit] I may be wrong here, this is what I'm going by http://statcounter.com/project/standard/stats.php?project_id=4926956&guest=1

newton, you are wrong on this

HL has been around since twine and tin can days, oh, yeah they still do that in texas.......

what makes this wrong, did he not say you determine your visitors from this?

[edit]oh and BTW I been around since morse code..

Hey newton...I think he meant to say that I was wrong about HL being around since keyboards were invented. Apparently he made the first phone call via can-phone to the marketing department in the next room over to let them know the keyboards were ready.

To all, a big Thank You!

I do understand the hit's, I now know why as well .... I do understand where they are coming from as well.

JoeWa  =  all your footer links ( about us privacy terms faq ) reference the Dolphin community (the original unaltered files). All these changes along with simplifying the first page (at least) will encourage your 32,000 daily visitors to consider joining. You should install Google Analytics and monitor the bounce rate among other crucial data.

I downloaded Mtools, the MTools_Page_Editor_1.6.1[1] is no longer supported, but i also downloaded MTools Page Editor 1.5.1, I'm not too sure if that is the correct one for my Dolphin? if it is I'm not sure how to install it. I tried to follow the instructions from the read me file and couldn't do it. I'm not too sure if I was even doing the install correctly?

 Thanks