Forum growth? What are some "good numbers"?

[jacobsen1]

I hope this is in the right section, as I couldn't find any similar posts, at least not recent ones. I'm wondering what some good stats in the first year or two with a forum would be? I'm talking in terms of members, posts, and threads.

We have around 18k posts a month coming in, ~875 new threads, and ~25 new members a month. After Right now the board is almost 16 months old and we have:


Threads: 9,748, Posts: 205,158, Members: 534, Active Members: 208my other question (and I've seen this around a bunch, here and on vborg) is about spammers... We've gotten 25 new members so far this month which would be a record for us. But so far 12 are confirmed spammers (either via posts, or obvious joe@buyviagranow.com email addresses) and most of the other new members haven't posted yet. We're running 3.6.8 and have email verification AND image verification. I don't really want to go a whole lot further than that as I'd rather deal with 1~2 spammers a day than risk missing a new legitimate member.

Are they coming from any sort of linkbacks? We've started removing all links from any spam posts and moving them to a moderated forum. The spammers get banned but we leave them in the db for future reference. I'm just wondering if it's something we've done, or just something to expect as the forum grows?

Thanks,
Ben Jacobsen
www.newschoolofphotography.com/forum (http://www.newschoolofphotography.com/forum)

[Floris]

If you put your stats into spreadsheet and built a graph image,
you will see the line go up or down.

That's how I do it. And a normal grown would be for it to go up.

18K posts per month, many, many boards with they got 18K a year.

[jacobsen1]

yeah, I have it all graphed and pretty, I'm just trying to gauge if these numbers are good or not.

Oh, and Floris, can you link me to a good how to on upgrading 3.6.8 to 3.7? We have a custom theme/style, but we did it ourselves and should be able to modify it easy enough so we can get upgraded. With all these new bot/spam issues and reading about how 3.7 is better equipped, I'm feeling like I should get off my butt and do it. ;)

Thanks,

[Floris]

The normal upgrade instructions apply, as for template edits, back up the template, revert it, and re-apply customizations. OR, the other way around, compare the custom template to the new code and apply new code to the custom template if you find out a function isn't working.

Upgrade instructions summery

* Close the forum
* Backup the .sql database and the forum files
* Download and unpack the 3.7.3 PL1 files
* Remove config.php.new from 3.7.3 PL1 /includes/ since you can use the old one from 3.6.x
* Upload the 3.7.3 PL1 files, overwriting the files online (don't resume, don't skip)
If you have custom images you can skip the images/ directory
* Run upgrade.php from the browser (yoursite.com/forum/install/upgrade.php)
* Follow all the upgrade steps until you end up in the admincp after deleting the install.php and upgrade1.php files.
* You can open the forum again after testing that everything went ok.

And you're done.

[jacobsen1]

how long should that take? And any way to test it prior to going for it? IE installing 3.7 in a different directory, getting it working over a few days theme wise, then closing 3.6.8, importing, renaming the folder, then opening the board again?

thanks again.

[flashgordon]

I have found my forum's growth to be rather linear, which has always surprised me.
One should think that after a certain size, the growth should explode exponentially or at least increase.
My site has been growing steadily with a constant rate for years.

[cheat-master30]

I wrote an article about just this subject:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=190849

Read the second and the third point mainly, all forums are different, and growth depends on the subject and member base it attracts. There's no set 'standard' 'good forum stats'.

[JoeBannon]

There's no set 'standard' 'good forum stats'.

The only thing you can do is compare it to others, in your niche and out. Take the average growth rate of all the other forums and compare it to yours.