Are you "always" logged in to ECF?

[NCC]

Just looking at the site stats and wondering how many of those members who are listed as being signed in at any given moment are actually active.

My case: My computer on & online 24/7. No matter what I'm doing, I've nearly always got my browser open, with at least one tab open on ECF. That's whether I'm here, asleep, at work ... I'm nearly always logged in.


And, what the heck was going on 7/12/2010?

 

[Bozzlite]

I don't ever log out so as to avoid the small task of logging in everytime I return to ECF. When I close my browser, I don't know if I'm still being counted among the active users.

And what happened onJuly 12th? That was before my time.

 

[BradSmith]

I am on a lot but when I leave I log off. It's no big deal for me to log back on. I don't know if this saves them bandwidth or not, but I don't think it hurts to log off.

 

[NCC]

And what happened onJuly 12th? That was before my time.

Well, I don't know. Maybe it was something in the news? But, from the site stats:
"Most users ever online was 2,503, 07-12-2010 at 05:47 PM.",
and from what I've been observing, that's at least 300% of normal during the prime time evening hours.

 

[Sdh]

I never log off! My computer is always on during the day. I do keep this page on a tab opened. I am not bored of this site yet. Most other forums do not have the activty as this one. I am kind of spent out for the moment...however, always looking for a sale. LOL


I do turn off computer when I go to sleep.

 

[Archer]

I log off but have been known to forget

 

[maxx]

Logging out doesn't save any resources. All forums have a setting where the admins put in a number of minutes of inactivity....usually about 20 minutes. After that 20 minutes of inactivity (like you got tired of ECF and went in and jumped on your wife or significant other), your name drops off the list. If you come back and refresh the page...the clock restarts. Also...usually when you see those outrageous "most users ever online" numbers, that was a day when a major search engine was deep indexing the site and sent in hundreds of spiders and bots. Can also happen when the site comes under attack by spam bots and/or hackers.

 

[Kevin Freeheart]

Logging out doesn't save any resources. All forums have a setting where the admins put in a number of minutes of inactivity....usually about 20 minutes. After that 20 minutes of inactivity (like you got tired of ECF and went in and jumped on your wife or significant other), your name drops off the list. If you come back and refresh the page...the clock restarts. Also...usually when you see those outrageous "most users ever online" numbers, that was a day when a major search engine was deep indexing the site and sent in hundreds of spiders and bots. Can also happen when the site comes under attack by spam bots and/or hackers.

Correct on every point.

Google has been known to spawn hundreds of processes to index and cache a site and then leave real quick.

 

[maxx]

My forum got hit with over 600 bots once. Some new upstart search site using Amazon's cloud to do the dirty work. Went on for hours and dragged the whole place down. I got tired of blocking IP ranges, so I just blocked all bots at the server with a robots.txt file. I don't rely on search engines for traffic, so no point in having them suck up all my bandwidth.

 

[AngusATAT]

And, what the heck was going on 7/12/2010?

Some Iranian hacker tried to get some money out of us by putting us under a DDOS attack, then saying he'd stop if we sent a certain amount of money to his PayPal account. Our coder shut him down pretty quick. No money for you!

 

[JerryRM]

Some Iranian hacker tried to get some money out of us by putting us under a DDOS attack, then saying he'd stop if we sent a certain amount of money to his PayPal account. Our coder shut him down pretty quick. No money for you!

What a ....., it must have felt good to shut him down. I wonder what he thought after that happened !! lol

 

[AngusATAT]

It makes me wonder how smaller, less experienced site owners deal with it when it happens. It has to suck. And from what I've seen, it happens all the time.

 

[maxx]

I've owned forums for almost 10 years. This is the first time I ever heard of this particular form of extortion actually happening. I would think they would hit a business site, which would be more concerned about downtime and financial loss. Strange this guy chose a non-profit site.

 

[Mr. Green]

I stay logged in until I clear my cookies an cache as to save those few seconds it to log in. My browsers not always open though either.