Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't realize it was a total count of people logged in instead of people that just logged in. I wonder why the numbers are so low?
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vaping is a niche market.
I think most on ECF might agree that the numbers started trending lower not long after everyone went on buying sprees to stock-up on gear. The PACT Act (effective April 2021, IIRC) likely played a role.
ECF is not alone with low numbers. I'm an active member on most of the vape forums. Each has experienced less traffic, no different than what we've seen here.
I think it's also worth noting that a good number of younger folks are not [as much] into forums like they are with more well known social media platforms (FB, IG, SnapChat, Reddit etc.). Forums were the OG form of social media.
That's not to say forums are dead, or dying, they are not. There are many popular non-vaping forums around that see very healthy amounts of daily traffic.
One recent article (among many) regarding forums...
Are Forums Dead for SEO in 2024? - Onely
Once extremely popular online forums seem to be replaced by social media groups. Are traditional forums still able to generate organic traffic?
"The Internet is changing, and so are the expectations of users. To stay relevant, forum sites need not only to solve their indexing dilemmas but also adapt to modern trends."
IMO, the powers that be took the first step with the recent XF upgrade [much needed modernization] i.e. 'look and feel' of the ECF.
How will ECF go about attracting new members AND getting them to be active on the forum? TBD.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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JMO... But I think a Lot gets down to the Difference between Attraction and Retention.
It's Great for a Site like this to have Lots of New Inbound Traffic. Yeah, that's kinda a Captain Obvious. But what does it matter if you have a Low Retention Rate of all those Fresh Faced Newbies?
Perhaps More Thought should be Devoted to Improving what a Newbie can Glean from the ECF? And How Easy is it for them to do so?
Could the ten year old or older threads at the bottom of each page be killing ECF's "indexability".Vaping is a niche market.
I think most on ECF might agree that the numbers started trending lower not long after everyone went on buying sprees to stock-up on gear. The PACT Act (effective April 2021, IIRC) likely played a role.
ECF is not alone with low numbers. I'm an active member on most of the vape forums. Each has experienced less traffic, no different than what we've seen here.
I think it's also worth noting that a good number of younger folks are not [as much] into forums like they are with more well known social media platforms (FB, IG, SnapChat, Reddit etc.). Forums were the OG form of social media.
That's not to say forums are dead, or dying, they are not. There are many popular non-vaping forums around that see very healthy amounts of daily traffic.
One recent article (among many) regarding forums...
Are Forums Dead for SEO in 2024? - Onely
Once extremely popular online forums seem to be replaced by social media groups. Are traditional forums still able to generate organic traffic?www.onely.com
"The Internet is changing, and so are the expectations of users. To stay relevant, forum sites need not only to solve their indexing dilemmas but also adapt to modern trends."
IMO, the powers that be took the first step with the recent XF upgrade [much needed modernization] i.e. 'look and feel' of the ECF.
How will ECF go about attracting new members AND getting them to be active on the forum? TBD.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Does the robot see the same useless, out of date and closed posts on every page that WE see?
Duck Duck results for "All in one e cigarette" don't feature ECF until after 30 links or more.
Bing; still no ECF on page 4.
Google: same
IMO, the blog entry linked is just a sales pitch for a SEO services company. A whole lot of bull and just a hint of cow.
Cheers
I
You Know what Else is Really Annoying about those "Similar Threads"?
They Never Change. It's Always the Same Threads. And One has to Scroll Past them to see if there is Anyone else currently Viewing the Thread.
Mooch's blog index page went from
to
The "blogs" subfolder was changed to "blog" after the update. A big deal since that original URL is posted on a lot of other websites, like high traffic sites (like Reddit), which funnel traffic to ECF, which is Mooch's home base.
Code:
https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/blogs/index.7653to
Code:
https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/blog/index.7653The "blogs" subfolder was changed to "blog" after the update. A big deal since that original URL is posted on a lot of other websites, like high traffic sites (like Reddit), which funnel traffic to ECF, which is Mooch's home base.
I could have posted many links, most of which say nearly the same regarding forums. Some go as far as saying "forums are dead".IMO, the blog entry linked is just a sales pitch for a SEO services company. A whole lot of bull and just a hint of cow.
The crux of what was said in the link I posted, regarding forums, is not untrue. The similarities between what they've noted are the nearly same as several other articles.
Look 'em up.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had been told that ECF needed to be re-indexed by Google after the update prior to this one but don't know if it ever happened. I know that the traffic in the reviews section took a dive after the last update.Could the ten year old or older threads at the bottom of each page be killing ECF's "indexability".
Does the robot see the same useless, out of date and closed posts on every page that WE see?
Duck Duck results for "All in one e cigarette" don't feature ECF until after 30 links or more.
Bing; still no ECF on page 4.
Google: same
IMO, the blog entry linked is just a sales pitch for a SEO services company. A whole lot of bull and just a hint of cow.
Cheers
I
I don't disagree.
The article just struck me as a sales pitch from a company selling SEO. (Not that there is anything wrong with that)
Cheers
I
Sites are indexed (crawled) all the time by Google et al.
"Depending on how active your site is, you should expect Google to crawl it anywhere between every four and thirty days. Sites updated more regularly tend to be crawled more often, given Googlebot tends to hunt for new content first."
"Google indexes billions of web pages. As a result, it would be impossible to crawl every page, every day."
"Google doesn't guarantee that it will crawl, index, or serve your page, even if your page follows Google's guidelines and policies for site owners."
Per Google's John Mueller...
"I think the hard part here is that we don't crawl URLs with the same frequency all the time. So some URLs we will crawl daily. Some URLs may be weekly—other URLs every couple of months, maybe even every once a half year."
Bottom line... it all depends. If a site is frequently updated (new content), it can get crawled every couple of days, sometimes daily.
"Depending on how active your site is, you should expect Google to crawl it anywhere between every four and thirty days. Sites updated more regularly tend to be crawled more often, given Googlebot tends to hunt for new content first."
"Google indexes billions of web pages. As a result, it would be impossible to crawl every page, every day."
"Google doesn't guarantee that it will crawl, index, or serve your page, even if your page follows Google's guidelines and policies for site owners."
Per Google's John Mueller...
"I think the hard part here is that we don't crawl URLs with the same frequency all the time. So some URLs we will crawl daily. Some URLs may be weekly—other URLs every couple of months, maybe even every once a half year."
Bottom line... it all depends. If a site is frequently updated (new content), it can get crawled every couple of days, sometimes daily.
Well new to us and new to them format. VU went through the same when they changed to this format and it took a few months to iron it all out. I doubt I'll ever like this style of format but understand why we are stuck with it.
All fixed up manually- found the payment Oct 4 - appreciate your support.
Will have tech try and figure out the issue..
Thank you @Misty , not an ad in sight
copy and paste no longer working for pics - none of the icons in the reply box are working - smileys, bold, italic etc. anybody else having this problem? started earlier today 
Might you have accidentally clicked "Toggle BB code" ???copy and paste no longer working for pics - none of the icons in the reply box are working - smileys, bold, italic etc. anybody else having this problem? started earlier today
If you did the toolbar will look like this with all tools greyed out and unavailable...
If that's what you did... click on "Toggle BB code" and the tools will show up again.
Testing... testing... testing...
Smileys are working for me.
I drag/drop pics, never did copy/paste for pics.
lol, thanks, smt! second time i did this 
but did not remember ........... sigh
that leaves the copy/paste problem for pics - worked fine yesterday
but did not remember ........... sighthat leaves the copy/paste problem for pics - worked fine yesterday
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