No feedback 99.99 percent of the time

[Radrook]

Forum URL: writerdreams.freeforums.net

After hundreds of views over approx a year, that is statistically highly improbable and extremely hard to believe. 
Also I found it impossible to post advertisements while pro-board seems to find it very easy. 

[Kami]

Can you elaborate a bit more? It feels rather as if I'm picking up the tail end of a prior discussion, which isn't particularly easy to give an answer to.

The questions I find myself wondering are:

• What, in particular, is almost impossible? 
• What do you mean by "feedback"?
• What do you mean by "posting advertisements" in relation to "pro-board" "finding it easy"?
• Also, are you saying "ProBoards" (as in the name of the company) or pro-board, as in their sister service forums.net, or pro-board as in boards who have opted for upgrading their service via adfree / domains / etc?

[Radrook]

By no feedback I mean going to my forum, reading, and leaving without saying anything. 
Very unlikely means that it isn't very likely to have so many visitors all seemingly dedicated to remaining silent.


BTW

Right after I posted this thread I received a copy of my  thread under the category of a response. 


Please note that there are supposed to be actual people reading those threads.
All of them are silent even though they know it is supposed to be a discussion forum?
One would figure that at least out of courtesy clicking like would happen.

Yet NOTHING!

he members who have joined post one message and then disappear into silence. 
The person that was supposed to help me to keep the forum going has joined in with the silence after posting a few times.
In short, I am talking to myself.

I recently Posted questions to be responded to in five separate threads and got nothing but silence. I did so in order to make sure that it wasn't because I ask no questions. It did absolutely no good since the complete silence remained just as steady.

About Pr Boards, all I know is that I was paying to remain ad free and to be able to advertise. No matter how much I tried the links would not take.  By easy I mean that whoever is posting the adds have no trouble posting them. That is all I meant. 

 

[Kami]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is actually pretty common. I'm so sorry that you've had to experience this, but there are so many people out there that try forums without getting much, if any, responses. If this is happening, then the simple answer is that the visitors you have had simply did not find your forum engaging enough to make the effort to participate. I don't mean that in an insulting way, but since registration is totally manual, this is the only answer -- which is not, by the way, a technical issue.​​​​​​​​​​​​

What I would recommend is to advertise here on Support in the Advertise Your ProBoard​ section, and to get feedback on what you can do to make your forum more appealing to prospective members / guests in the Get Opinions About Your Forum​ section here on Support. Additionally, you may want to check out the Open For Discussion​ section as there are several topics there having to do with gaining more members / increasing activity / preventing a forum from dying.

For whatever it's worth, I'd be more than happy to give feedback if you post in the GOAYF section!

EDIT:​ I noticed that eight months ago, you started a GOAYF thread but never responded to the person who gave you their review​, then created a second thread. While I have no idea why you didn't reply, the lack of it likely stopped other people from weighing in as well.​​​​​​

For your problem with ​​​ads, please elaborate on what you mean by "No matter how much I tried the links would not take.  By easy I mean that whoever is posting the adds have no trouble posting them. "

The default PB ads are served via Google Adsense, so no one is "posting" them. When you pay for adfree, these ads are removed, but you also​ have to pay for a custom domain from a third party (not ProBoards) AND to pay for domain linking (with ProBoards) in order to post your own ads in their place. If the links "aren't taking", you should post each step you take in order to display ads on your forum​​​​​​ so a PB admin can follow each step to see if they can reproduce the problem.

EDIT:​ Also about eight months ago, you complained about this issue in the wrong thread to which an admin responded that you should post here in the support board, which apparently did not happen until today. ​​​While I understand your frustration, it was up to you to follow up.

[Radrook]

Thanks for the detailed response. Much appreciated. Please note that the reason I find the silence strange is also because I am getting approx 170 views per twenty-four hours repeatedly and steadily. In other words, people are returning and viewer base is growing. So that is what really puzzles me. They are interested only in reading?
After all, why keep coming back if the forum material isn't interesting? Some visitors placed likes at the Twitter but not at the website. Why the aversion to posting it at the website?

About the advertisement-thanks for the info. I was not aware that I needed to get another domain name in order to post ads.

BTW
My apologies if in my confusion I failed to reply to anyone who offered opinions or a helping habnd. I was learning how to get around. I will make sure it doesn't happen again. All your info is very helpful and I will take it all under serious consideration.

Kind Regards
Radrook

[Kitty Katt]

Please take note of another possibility that some of those viewers are probably crawl bots, so the daily statistics for viewers will be for both bots and real people. Since they do not get placed separately, it is difficult to ascertain how many of each their really is each day. Also, if I am understanding correctly, you are making posts (even if you are "talking to yourself"), which adds new content. If those posts are in a guest-viewable board, then the bots will notice that as well.

[bigballofyarn]

Apr 15, 2019 7:49:02 GMT -8 Radrook said:

Thanks for the detailed response. Much appreciated. Please note that the reason I find the silence strange is also because I am getting approx 170 views per twenty-four hours repeatedly and steadily. In other words, people are returning and viewer base is growing. So that is what really puzzles me. They are interested only in reading?
After all, why keep coming back if the forum material isn't interesting? Some visitors placed likes at the Twitter but not at the website. Why the aversion to posting it at the website?

Kind Regards
Radrook

Just for reference, bots and web crawlers count as guests too. I average 120 unique guests per 24 hours. I don't know how many clicks each guest makes.  If they each make 3, that's 360 views from mostly bots.  Since you can't tell who the guests are without researching every single IP address, I would assume it to be mostly bot activity. I wouldn't assume that people are taking one look at your forum and then leaving.

[Radrook]

Thanks to everyone for the information concerning bots and web crawlers. Is there no way to restrict the forum views count to only real people?

[Kami]

No, there isn’t. A “view” is counted any time a page is requested from the server (so it’s not even necessarily unique and you may be counting yourself as well) so since bots do make those types of requests as well (they have to load the page to do their job, after all) they’re counted.

[Scott]

Apr 14, 2019 20:21:31 GMT -8 Radrook said:

Please note that there are supposed to be actual people reading those threads.
All of them are silent even though they know it is supposed to be a discussion forum?
One would figure that at least out of courtesy clicking like would happen.

Yet NOTHING!

FYI, guests cannot 'like' a post so this option is not available to them. Only registered members can 'like' posts.

he members who have joined post one message and then disappear into silence. 
The person that was supposed to help me to keep the forum going has joined in with the silence after posting a few times.
In short, I am talking to myself.

Currently the forum has only 3 members and the one who joined and made only 1 post was a spammer (which I have since taken action on).

About Pr Boards, all I know is that I was paying to remain ad free and to be able to advertise. No matter how much I tried the links would not take.  By easy I mean that whoever is posting the adds have no trouble posting them. That is all I meant. 

I do see you purchased an ad-free subscription last July, but I am only seeing that current month's charge, so it looks like that subscription was cancelled.

[Radrook]

Apr 15, 2019 9:28:06 GMT -8 Scott said:

Apr 14, 2019 20:21:31 GMT -8 Radrook said:

Please note that there are supposed to be actual people reading those threads.
All of them are silent even though they know it is supposed to be a discussion forum?
One would figure that at least out of courtesy clicking like would happen.

Yet NOTHING!

FYI, guests cannot 'like' a post so this option is not available to them. Only registered members can 'like' posts.

he members who have joined post one message and then disappear into silence. 
The person that was supposed to help me to keep the forum going has joined in with the silence after posting a few times.
In short, I am talking to myself.

Currently the forum has only 3 members and the one who joined and made only 1 post was a spammer (which I have since taken action on).

About Pr Boards, all I know is that I was paying to remain ad free and to be able to advertise. No matter how much I tried the links would not take.  By easy I mean that whoever is posting the adds have no trouble posting them. That is all I meant. 

I do see you purchased an ad-free subscription last July, but I am only seeing that current month's charge, so it looks like that subscription was cancelled.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Reply:

Yes I decided to stop the and free service since the primary reason I had subscribed to it was to post adds. On the other hand if all I am getting is web-crawlers and bots then what;s the use of advertising?  I assume that if I make the board for members only then that will prevent the bots from showing up as guests? Or do the bots join? I have previously set the forum for members only and the views have become a trickle.  Who is viewing despite the members only I don't know. The web-crawlers and bots?

[elhombre]

Simply.

You can't have it both ways,close the forum to visitors,no bots but no "real"people either.

Leave it open,get both.

There had probably been an increase in views anyway in the past few days because of this discussion.

[Lynx]

As an added note: bots cannot register on your forum - this is one of the reasonings behind having CAPTCHA, so bots can't join as "members". Bots can only see what guests can see, so if you want to see what a bot can see on your forum, just log out and you'll see what they can see.

[Kami]

Closing the forum to guests won't stop bots being logged. As mentioned previously every page load request to the server​ counts as a logged 'view'. Even if one turns on the guests must log in option, bots will still request the home page (even if they only see the login screen), which still counts as a view.

If I may be so bold, I think you need to hit pause and focus on getting feedback on your content instead of concentrating on the number of hits you're getting; your priority here is a little skewed (focusing on numbers and thinking that those should automatically translate into participation, rather than seeing it as a sign that the content is not being viewed as something to participate in). At the end of the day, the amount of traffic you get isn't inherently indicative to actual participation, so you should figure out what your forum is doing well with and what it can improve on before trying to figure out a way to bolster numbers.

Gaining participating members is about conversion​, not traffic. Conversion is the term used for guests who turn into (convert to) members -- if you have a tonne of traffic and no conversion, it's simply because your content is not appealing for the non-bot users who are visiting. You're definitely right in that paying for ads is pointless until you discover why​ your content is not resonating with its target audience.​​​​​ 

[Radrook]

Thanks to everyone who has provided advice and information which helps me to focus on the right things.
It would be nice to know what percentage are web-crawlers and bots though. Hope that perhaps in the near future some type of add-on can be provided in order to make that possible.