HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US!

#1

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HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, EVERYONE!
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Today, the Forum is exactly one year old! :yahoo:

Yup, it's precisely 1 year since I fired up the forum and put it on-line, with me as the one-and-only member.

Since then, things have changed just a bit! There are now over two thousand members, and nearly 1,800 posts, in well over 150 topics. We see hundreds of visitors every day, around 5 or 6 new members every day, and a new post every 4.9 hours, on average. Traffic to the server is growing heavily all the time, which is why I recently upgraded the internet connection, to one with much, much higher bandwidth, so nobody will get bogged down! (There's more upgrades in the pipeline too...)

So I'd like to say a big THANK YOU! To everyone who has made the forum such a vibrant, dynamic place, and also such a friendly, helpful place too. You guys have made this place wonderful, and I'm really thankful to everyone.

HAPPY HAPPY DAY!

- Stuart -

#2

I am sure we would all like to thank you, Stuart, for not only setting up the forum but for being such a great studio designer, teacher and guide through so many people's studio plans and builds.

#3

Happy Anniversary and thank you very mich for creating the forum in the first place!

#4

Happy anniversary!

#5

Greetings Stuart,

Happy Anniversary!!

Thanks for all you've done!

All the best,

Paul

#6

I concur!

Cheers!
Jennifer

#7

endorka wrote:Source of the post I concur!

Cheers!
Jennifer

I think you are member #4, Jennifer! :shock:

Wow! Your place has come a long way since then, too!

- Stuart -

#8

Here's some interesting stats I pulled off the server last night:

(The graph ain't very pretty, and looks rather 1990's video-game style graphics, but hey, it's free software for analyzing web performance! And it does a good job.)

That shows the traffic growth over the last year, on the Forum. You can probably see why I figured out in June that it was time to upgrade the bandwidth! Got quotes in July, signed the contract in August, and the new fiber is online since last week.

And here's some numbers to go with that graph:

That's for the last full month of data, which was August. Nearly half a million hits in the month!

So, the forum is seeing between 500 and 1,500 hits per hour, on average, and is serving somewhere around 800 to 1,900 megabytes per day, to somewhere between 200 and 800 people per day. You folks are also viewing between 12,000 and 24,000 pages per day.

The good news is: we now have plenty of capacity to handle all this, and plenty of capacity for much, much more growth, so please do continue to spread the word!

Tell your friends and acquaintances about the Forum. Anyone who might need to build or treat some type of acosutic space, which includes not just studios, but also home theaters, churches, music listening rooms, offices, restaurants, and any other room that sounds bad. Let them know there's a place where they can find all the info they need for that, along with a while bunch of really great people!

(Oh, and if you are interested, try googling "studio design forum", and see who comes up second on the list, from among a total of "About 335,000,000 results", according to Google.

Not too shabby, for a place that didn't even exist a year and a day ago!)

Wooohooo! Thanks again, everyone!

- Stuart -

#9

Wow!! Congrats Stuart! That is awesome news all around. And VERY impressive on the google search results. Ranking so high like that is no small feat in the SEO world! I’ve been down that rabbit hole a few times and the only tried and true way to get a ranking like that is from user interaction and really really good content. Can’t fake google these days in the organic ranks. The best really do rise to the top! And in a year that’s just flat out amazing!

Cheers
Trevor

#10

Wow!! Congrats Stuart! That is awesome news all around. And VERY impressive on the google search results. Ranking so high like that is no small feat in the SEO world!

Thanks, Trevor!

To be honest, I haven't really done any SEO tweaking! I looked into it a bit early on, and saw how complicated it can get, and I read a lot of warnings about if you mess it up or try to manipulate it, then places like Google will notice, and downgrade your rating! So I decided to give it a pass. There's no special hidden tags or files, and not even a "sitemap.xml" until yesterday, when I finally got around to building one. The only SEO token I had, was a robots.txt that basically said "Mr. Google, spider whatever you want, except the personal stuff". Just very basic. I followed Google's own advice on a few things about the Forum organization and the way it is set up, and security. They say that doing that will improve your ranking a bit. But most of that is just common sense anyway (although I am aware of some other forums that don't to any of what they say!). But apart from that, I haven't done anything special with SEO, to try to improve the ranking. And certainly not "buying" any ratings! I couldn't afford that, even if I wanted to, but to be honest, I think it is unethical anyway....

So yeah, I'm pretty pleased too! It seems to be that we got where we are, on merit alone.

I’ve been down that rabbit hole a few times and the only tried and true way to get a ranking like that is from user interaction and really really good content. Can’t fake google these days in the organic ranks.

That seems to be the case here! Which is why I'm so thankful to all the forum members, because it is THEIR posts, and THEIR project, and THEIR content that is driving the ranking. Not me. If it was just me, all by myself, posting about acoustics and my pet peeves, then the ranking would be non-existent. It is only thanks to the great members here, and all their posts, that the forum is getting good ratings.

The best really do rise to the top! And in a year that’s just flat out amazing!

My conclusion, then, is that we have some pretty amazing members here, and some pretty amazing projects!

:yahoo:

- Stuart -

#11

Happy anniversary to the forum!

Congrats Stuart! There is such great community here giving all their knowledgement and advices, and almost everything is proven to be truth!

I'm glad to be a part and to could learn so much in so little time from all you folks!

Cheers!

Eric

#12

Thanks Eric!
Now we just have to keep on making it better and better!

- Stuart -

#13

Happy Anniversary!

Thanks Stuart. For everything you do. Thanks.

Mark

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