AFF Statistics

**russellw** · 21-10-2009, 10:09 AM

For the benefit of those interested in such things, here are a few of the metrics that we measure for AFF.

We will start with a look at where the posting activity comes from - firstly with a top level view (by raw numbers and percentage) and then for each main area of the forum.

No real surprise to see that the General area dominates with just over 30% of the total forum posts but the Club & Speciality area also ranks highly.

To break these down further:

General

The Pub and Bar dominate this area, making up 75% of the total post count in this area and almost 24% of the overall forum posts.

Clubs

For clarity this is divided into two sections - the car clubs and the AFF based clubs.

Ford Passenger Cars

A fairly even spread at the top of the table here with FPV/Boss just ahead of Contemporary and Territory.

The Workshop

Cleveland makes up 23% of this area - about twice as much as the next most popular Windsor and Ford 6's.

Events

Unique Monthly Visits

This metric depicts the number of unique visitors to the forum each month during the period since the inception of AFF. There are seasonal trends noticeable in the data but the numbers have grown from the ~20,000 per month in 2004 to around 90,000 now.

Weekly Posts

The average number of new posts per week is currently at 9,892 and that level of posting has been fairly consistent over the last couple of years.

Registrations

The chart below tracks the number of new valid registrations each week since inception. The level has been high in the latter part of this year so far.

Bandwidth

The chart below shows the amount of bandwidth used by AFF on a daily basis in Mb per day. The current level is ~ 20 Gb per day.

.. and the same for the number of pages served per day which hovers around the 600,00 mark.

.. and finally the number of server database responses per day which is currently ~ 2,000,000 per day.

Cheers
Russ

sgt_doofey · 21-10-2009, 10:21 AM

What happened in September to cause the massive jump in bandwidth there Russell? Any speculation on that?

**russellw** · 21-10-2009, 04:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgt_doofey

What happened in September to cause the massive jump in bandwidth there Russell? Any speculation on that?

I suspect it was the change in server location which meant that the backup was not going to a server on the same subnet as it used to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raptor

Any idea on how this compares with other forums both here in Aus and intenationally. I know about the big boards link below that I occasionaly look at. Seems AFF steady rise has stabilised somewhat around 700 (by wkly post count) but is much higher on other criteria.

It is the second most active forum in Australia (behind Whirlpool) and globally ranks in the top 10 for automotive forums. The BB ranking for activity globally is around 85th of the 1800 they monitor; the page views about 65th and the average on line about 80th. Not a bad effort. The ranking of around 700 is unlikely to change as it is based on total post count and some of the Japanese game forums have in excess of 50 million posts!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghia5L

If that includes pre-July '07 posting then the results might be skewed there. If those bars for all the clubs represented above could all be split beyond July '07 you'd get a more up-to-date version of statistics.

As they come from the overall data it would be difficult to split them on that basis but I agree with your basic point that the percentage mix would change.

Cheers
Russ

hardlynormal · 22-10-2009, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellw

As they come from the overall data it would be difficult to split them on that basis but I agree with your basic point that the percentage mix would change.

Nothing a simple SQL query couldn't find out ;)

**Peuty** · 21-10-2009, 10:21 AM

20GB per day. Astounding.

Jason[98.EL] · 21-10-2009, 10:57 AM

wow Ozecruisers with 45.7% of the of the forum based clubs I didnt think it was that busy in there but it is good to see

Jason

mcflux · 21-10-2009, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason[98.EL]

wow Ozecruisers with 45.7% of the of the forum based clubs I didnt think it was that busy in there but it is good to see

Jason

If that includes pre-July '07 posting then the results might be skewed there. If those bars for all the clubs represented above could all be split beyond July '07 you'd get a more up-to-date version of statistics.

As for the other stats, it is interesting to see the low percentage representation for the Inline 6 area, I would have thought that area would be much more busy. (And it appears a lot of Clevo owners have engine problems :P go the Wheezer!)

**Raptor** · 21-10-2009, 11:36 AM

Interesting stats Russ.

Any idea on how this compares with other forums both here in Aus and intenationally. I know about the big boards link below that I occasionaly look at. Seems AFF steady rise has stabilised somewhat around 700 (by wkly post count) but is much higher on other criteria.

mcflux · 21-10-2009, 05:08 PM

Quote:

It is the second most active forum in Australia (behind Whirlpool)

Not bad!!!

As for my previous post, I should have clarified that B-Series for example appears to have been formed in early 2007 (so the other 3 subforums in this category have a 3 year jump here). Perhaps a monthly AFF Statistics update (locked thread?) could show members where the various subforums and AFF as a whole are heading, in the same format as above

CAMS290 · 21-10-2009, 05:54 PM

Surprised the Territory ranked so high in the Ford passenger car section, about level with contemporary and Boss powered cars, well done to the Tezza guys and girls.

sgt_doofey · 22-10-2009, 08:55 AM

Just out of curiosity, what size (roughly) is the database for AFF?

You can pick the nerd can't you? Asking about bandwidth spikes and database size

_

**russellw** · 22-10-2009, 09:18 AM

In compressed form the databases (there are more than one) use about 4.5 Gb of space (including 1.6 Gb of attachments) with a further 19 Gb being used by the (50,000+) gallery images and 765 Mb in the 8,000 other images.

Cheers
Russ

jonk · 22-10-2009, 10:45 AM

It's a pity Russ you can't do a review on the actual hardware setup for FF. Whirlpool do it, as does overclockers. Blow by blow accounts of what's in the guts of the servers but glad to see something about stats though.

Not surprised about the Terri forum. There's been some memorable threads come up out of there. Territory owners I guess really are attached to their vehicles in a unique sort of way. Ford tapped into something when they built this car, just can't put my finger on it...

**russellw** · 22-10-2009, 11:40 AM

It's not 100% accurate but for these purposes it's close enough. Here are the AFF club stats for the 3 larger clubs over the periods 1/7/07 to now and 1/7/08 to now.

Cheers
Russ

SLO AU XR8 · 25-10-2009, 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellw

It's not 100% accurate but for these purposes it's close enough. Here are the AFF club stats for the 3 larger clubs over the periods 1/7/07 to now and 1/7/08 to now.

Cheers
Russ

Looks like a huge hit was taken when the E-Series owners club split from AFF and had a large number of members banned....

**russellw** · 25-10-2009, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SLO AU XR8

Looks like a hug\e hit was taken when the E-Series owners club split from AFF and had a large number of members banned....

As you would expect - although it would be fair to say that the quality of the posts improved significantly and there is a lot less angst around that group.
Considering that we aren't actually here to rack up stats, I am more than happy to swap quantity for quality!

superroo · 22-10-2009, 11:52 AM

Intering info russ. Do you have infomation on the number of active members?

Cheers

**russellw** · 22-10-2009, 08:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by superroo

Intering info russ. Do you have infomation on the number of active members?

Cheers

Of the current 55,000 odd members, 19,181 have been active in the last 30 days and 23,505 in the last 60 days. We are probably about due for another purge.

Cheers
Russ

FPVF6X201 · 24-10-2009, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellw

Of the current 55,000 odd members, 19,181 have been active in the last 30 days and 23,505 in the last 60 days. We are probably about due for another purge.

Cheers
Russ

Excellent info there Russ.

34.87% of members active in the last 30 days. 42.73% of members active in the last 60 days.

So nearly half of your membership is still active. Pretty good result i'd say.

**Elks** · 24-10-2009, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellw

Of the current 55,000 odd members, .......

Cheers
Russ

And 6 normal members...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

**buggerlugs** · 26-10-2009, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elks

And 6 normal members...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

And I'm one of those six !! ( had to get in early )

Geez Louise · 22-10-2009, 12:31 PM

Very interesting to see the data Russ. Thank you for posting it up for all of us to see.

Lovin the membership spike

Hopefully it just continues on the up and prove not to be a spike at all.

**Grunter** · 22-10-2009, 03:25 PM

Very interesting data.

What blows my mind is that Ford and FPV don't seem to want to take any interest or advantage of this continually growing Automotive community.

Imagine FPV contributing to the forums by doing something along the line of what the SRT engineers do with the Chrysler community forums and talk to their owners about their current and possiblely upcoming models and why they may have made decisions a certain way, etc. Or Ford inviting forum members to exclusive previews of new/upcoming models as they did back in 2002, etc.

Hell clearing up misinformation from their dealers and posting the correct answers to general questions (aka the iPhone update for the FG's) would be a hugh benefit to their customer and also show potential future customers that their isnt a wall of silence.

So many possibilities to solidify and also grow their market if they had the smarts to do it in a control manner.

Apologies for the rant, but seeing info like Russell's makes it even more obvious that there is this canyon between Ford/FPV and their current, possible repeat and new customers.

Falc'man · 27-04-2010, 09:08 PM

First time I see this thread... awesome work mate. It (the forum) is a great service to Ford, and all the blue-bloods.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grunter

Very interesting data.

What blows my mind is that Ford and FPV don't seem to want to take any interest or advantage of this continually growing Automotive community.

Imagine FPV contributing to the forums by doing something along the line of what the SRT engineers do with the Chrysler community forums and talk to their owners about their current and possiblely upcoming models and why they may have made decisions a certain way, etc. Or Ford inviting forum members to exclusive previews of new/upcoming models as they did back in 2002, etc.

Hell clearing up misinformation from their dealers and posting the correct answers to general questions (aka the iPhone update for the FG's) would be a hugh benefit to their customer and also show potential future customers that their isnt a wall of silence.

So many possibilities to solidify and also grow their market if they had the smarts to do it in a control manner.

Apologies for the rant, but seeing info like Russell's makes it even more obvious that there is this canyon between Ford/FPV and their current, possible repeat and new customers.

Well put on all counts.

SpoolMan · 22-10-2009, 07:42 PM

Great work Russ, informative and easy to read..

mcflux · 23-10-2009, 01:55 PM

Thanks for going to the effort of further scrutinising the club data

As for the Big Boards ranking, are there other ranking systems out there? I'm assuming Big Boards is one of the "standards" by which forums are ranked by?

**russellw** · 23-10-2009, 02:48 PM

BigBoards and Alexa are the two primary ranking systems - neither is perfect in terms of overall rankings but at least BB gives you the breakdown into each category whereas Alexa uses some math slanted toward post count and member numbers rather than current activity levels.

Cheers
Russ

**Mechan1k** · 24-10-2009, 04:26 PM

Also good to see LPG 2nd in the The Workshop area as well.

Apparently it's the best LPG resource forum (sub-forum) in Australia ... where there are users signing up from other brands ust to find out more info on LPG.

Good too see the Territory section right up there as well.

DBourne · 24-10-2009, 04:33 PM

awesome stats, thanks for posting

DBourne · 24-10-2009, 06:17 PM

it is probably picking up on his posts