I have a counter of how many visits are made to the site.
I notice it increases every day and even over the night.
Is there something in the Class Creator operations that would cause this count to increase without any outside access being made?

I do not believe there are any processes that we run that would count as a visit.

From the statistics page...
* The home page counter has a 24 hour time clock (cookie). This means if a visitor accesses your home page over and over again in a 24 hour block of time (which is typical when browsing around your site), they are only counted 1 time. If the same visitor returns to your home page after 24 hours, the visitor is then counted again 1 time. This 24 hour time clock was put in place to provide a good assessment of the actual number of visitors your site is receiving as opposed to counting every single hit to your home page, which provides a distorted view of actual visitors.

Not sure if that helps. I am not sure if the act of, for example, when the Google bot spiders a site, if that would be registered as well.

I had made the same observation that our site has more visitors recorded on the clock than it shows on the statistics log that records all who actually logged onto the site. My interpretation of the excess numbers were that there may be persons who make contact with the home page, they are counted, but unable to log onto the site because it is password protected and only the legitimate or duly registered members are actually able to get onto the site. I have many Classmates who have never joined our site but they would like to see the Picture Gallery which is protected, and they are unable to get onto the site, and consequently they are counted.

I have observed changes in other numbers that I cannot begin to understand. Our active members are 112 and the number of profiles updated is 101. The number of profiles that contain information is recorded as 237 and the actual number should be closer to 113. The number of Classmate Photos recorded on the site by the Web Site counter is 229 and the actual number is about 85. The inflation of these numbers occured recently and I did not inquire because I thought the problem would correct itself. I assumed that the formula for making these calculations was being modified as the Web Site was being updated internally.

Have you uploaded photos to profiles of classmates who have not yet joined the site? From what I can tell that would seem to be the case and might account for the "discrepancies" you're noting.

Thank you very much for your response. I have uploaded information and pictures on deceased Classmates and many who have not joined the site. I never imagined that this would be reflected. My class is very large and we are scattered all accross the US and I have placed pictures on the profile pages of many who have not joined the site to eliminate notes and files. Thanks again for the explanation.

Scott,
I think the spider bot might be the answer to my observation of our site. There are a lot of members who have not JOINed the site, but the counter seems to increase more frequently than I think members are accessing the site, especially during a 24 hour time period.
It is not really a problem though, but thanks for the explanation.

I suspected it but without access to detailed reports, I had no way to really prove the theory.