Hi there:

Is there a way to change the "home page visitors" count to "log ins"? Or maybe just add this feature? It seems that the "home page visitors" count is very skewed because as an administrator, I go to the homepage many times per visit to the website which would mean that each time I go there to see if something looks right, etc, it would add a visit to the counter. And many others who visit the page are likely to go to the homepage many times rather than just hit the navigational links. A "log ins" counter would just count each time someone logs in. I think this information would be more helpful as a statistic. Sorry if this is a repeat question. Just a thought.

Thanks,
Jana

That number also wouldn't be accurate because you don't have to log out of the website. If you use the KEEP ME LOGGED IN option, your classmates don't ever need to re-login, so they wouldn't be counted.

This verbiage from the Statistics page explains how the counter works. It appears to me that what Jana is looking for is already provided via the data in the graph.

* 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.

** An Active Classmate is a Classmate who has joined and is participating in your site. If you have added any Guest Members to your site they are not included in your active Classmate total. The Inactive total does not include deceased Classmates.

*** Classmate activity is determined by the number of registered users who accessed the site while logged in during each day.

Thanks, FC

I hate to respond to an old topic, but I'm having the same problem as Jana and saw no need to start a new topic on a problem that has already been reported. I have noticed this week that the number shown as Home Page Visitors dramatically increases each day. It increases by more people than Log into our site.

Can someone investigate whether this function is working correctly?

Thanks, Bob

Who is considered a "vistor"? Is a search engine bot, email scalpers, or any other non-human entity that attempt to access a site counted?

Bob Kelly wrote:

The number of Home Page Visitors is supposed to count ALL visits your home page whether logged in or not. Accordingly, it should always be greater than or equal to the number of people who log on.

That being said, I've done some investigation that indicates that the function is not working properly and may indeed be wildly over counting.

My school has sites for '57, '58, '59 and '60 that from time to time have competitions to see which can garner the most homepage hits. As a consequence I have been keeping detailed statistics of same for over a year and a half. After the first week of February I noticed an anomaly. The class of '57, that had been averaging about 90 hits a week suddenly increased to well over 200 and since then has been averaging 260. The number of classmates logging on has remained fairly consistent since I started keeping track.

I am the root admin for '58 and a co-admin on the other sites. The '57 site was not running Google Analytics but I got the root admin's ok to install it recently. I found wildly divergent results. For approximately the same time period Google Analytics showed about 50 visitors while the Class Creator site showed 250.

I have another CC site for my sailing club that also seems to be over counted. I have no idea as to whether or not it is of any significance but a commonality between that site and the '57 school site is that they both have their own domain names. I note that your site also has its own domain name.

[Edit] I've attached the Homepage Hit statistics graph. I think it's pretty apparent as to why I became suspicious about the '57 performance. The time span over which data have been collected is the same for all classes. It's offset one from the other because the sites were created at different points in time.

I'm happy with the way things are.

Because all our pages are unlocked, except classmate profiles, and because our site goes back to kindergarten and has a large number of In Memory tributes for faculty and staff, as well as their current location/status, we get a substantial number of visitors who were not in our class but attended the schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

It's nice to see their visits reflected in the home page visit totals.

Can't speak to the disparities mentioned by FC as we haven't installed Google Analytics.

Has it been determined what the counter actually counts?

The reason for asking now is that the counter on our Statistics Page is rapidly approaching 50,000. When it hits 50,000, I had thought I would send an email to the class telling them we had achieved a milestone, but from what I have read after searching the forums, I'm not sure I could explain to anyone what the counter actually counts.

Thanks, Bob

The observations I made in response #6 remain unchanged and persist.

While I'm not surprised that sites with a domain name get more hits from search engines and/or search engine generated traffic, I see some evidence that that the home page hit counter appears to be accurate.

I have a script on my home page which logs home page hits and displays a map showing where the home page hits came from. Of course, the home page hits are often much higher than the login count, but the statics behind the map show the counts for each state (and city and country) - and the total hits from April 2014 when I installed the script are very close to the increase in the home page hit counter since then.

It's also occasionally true that the home page hits increase and the login count are very close. I believe in that case I'm still getting those search engine generated home page hits, but that some member access and logins come from notify message which contain a link to a specific page or profile where a member might go directly to that page or profile (after logging in on the Restricted page) and then exit without ever going to the home page.

I think all of the above can be true. The same person can get counted multiple times in a day, for example if they clear cookies on exit. Or use different browsers or devices.

When I'm testing I get counted as 6 visitors (IE, Edge, FF, Chrome, Safari, Opera).

I've never bothered to verify so this is somewhat anecdotal. I think the 24hr clock for the classmate login count works even if you do not log out. I often close the page and then come back the next day and visit again, yet don't have to log back in and I show up as a classmate visitor.

So for sure it measures visitors of some kind

If the counter is only counting visits to the home page, the data will not mean much for our site.

When we make updates (photo galleries, User Forums, In Memory, etc.), we send an email to the class giving them a link to the updated information. That way classmates do not have to go through the home page.

We have always thought that sending a link in the email is faster and easier than telling classmates to go to the home page, then click on User Forum, then click on Favorite High School Memories, then click on a specific thread, etc.

Since we are approaching our 5th year with the web site, I hoped the counter would give the number of classmates accessing our web site since it went live in 2011.

Bob