Actually, I do not list all the users who are on the site as that section would be a monster to display (and significantly slows down the page load time). I use this block of code to only display users who are in a "premium" group:
Code:
// MDP: Do not show regular users on index
if ( $loggedin['displaygroupid'] != 2 && $loggedin['displaygroupid'] != 17 ) {
eval('$activeusers .= ", ' . fetch_template('forumhome_loggedinuser') . '";');
}
Right now I have over 670 registered users online - can you imagine how obnoxious that Who's Online would be to display? More than 25% of my traffic comes from overseas, so I try to keep my pages to a reasonable size.
Up until about 6 months ago when I converted to vB, I pruned posts every 90 days from my site. I've also entirely deleted one of the forums a couple of times and forced my users to start over from scratch when they couldn't follow the gudelines. I've had a forum on this site for more than 5 years.
I do not let people view IMG tags on my site unless they are registered; and I replace all IMG tags with links to the registration page telling them they can't view images and must register first. When I have this in place, I get 800-1000 signups a day (I frequently change this setting, sometimes turning off whole forums to unregistered users who then get a signup page from their Google referral).
Because I get thousands of referrals from Google a day, alot of those looking for pictures of so-and-so, its not unusual that a percentage of those would convert into signups. It's also why I have a low user-to-post ratio - alot of lurkers (which is why I don't care to list them in the Who's Online).
Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it's not legit.
That's awesome man, I don't let visitors view attachments on my site either unless they are registered. That's the only way to go IMO, especially when we do show coverage from various car shows.
Instead of pruning half the member list, why not just remove the listing of members and just show how many are online. I know several larger forums that do that (pbnation and several others) and it looks very clean.
Congrats on the traffic and signups, that is amazing.
What kind of server do you have the board on? I can't imagine what kind of strain those traffic numbers put on the site.
01-04-2006, 08:20 PM
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