I haven't done this in awhile but I thought I would start the new year with a how we're doin on the tech side of things.

1. The picture re-sizing feature added last month seems to be working.

2. There is a problem with the PM (Personal Message) system if you changed your Display Name. That's still being worked on.

3. The Ning site is but a memory...

So onto the stats...  

The stats below from 2012 are the last recorded from before we moved to the current host and new  forum software.   February of 2012 was when we moved hosts, upgraded to the current forums, and implimenting the Welcome Center.

While the total number of signups per year has declined from it's average of 1000/yr for the first 5 years to an average of 770/yr over the past 7 years, traffic in general has been on a consistant increase with the number of unique visitors each month increaseing by 25% in just the past two years.

There were nearly 142,000 unique visitors to the site in the past two years.  Even factoring in people like myself with multiple computers and devices, that's a lot of unique visitors, a lot of lurkers. While 980 of our members were active in the past two years. that really is just a drop in the bucket to the number of people who visit this site.  And in case like me you thought maybe some of those 142K unique visitors were bots or drive-by's, the average time spent on the site per visit is just over 5 minutes.  

When I see increases or decreases in any data, I like to corroborate the data from multiple sources.  Our flag counter shows that this site has been visited by people from 192 countries and our Analytics shows people from 99 unique countries visited us just in the last month.  

As of January of 2012 

• We had 9,195 members 
• There were 341,879 posts in 26,573 topics. 
• There is an average each month about 6,000 vistors, located in 84 countries.

As of January of 2014

• We had 10,609 members (+1,414)
• There were 474,769 posts in 35,191 topics. (+132,890 / + 8,618)
• There is an average each month of about 8,000 vistors, located in 165 countries. (+2000 / +81)

I would also like to take a moment to thank the Welcome Commitee as a whole.  Besides Alpep and I there are OMA, Damon, Muzza, MWoody, Richard Parker, Patch, Nick and Bobbo.  

While everyone answers questions, it's primarily Damon that acts as gatekeeper, key-giver, etc.. as he is the only one with the ability (besides Al and I) to press the button that gives new members access to roam about the forums and alerting me to issues or potential issues as they come up.   So an extra tip'o da hat to Damon for keeping up with all the new members each month and getting them into the group.

That's really all I have.  A bunch of boring numbers that continue to amaze me, and have done so for over 12 years.

I will leave with this one last thought.  While Ovation itself is going through changes and the future is unknown, it seems there are a LOT of people that are still interested in Ovation guitars.  More importantly, more and more new people seem to be interested in them each year.  I don't know what it means, but I do find it interesting.

Take Care and Happy 2014 and Beyond !!!!!

Amazing! Over 35,00 topics.

One thing I've noticed in my short tenure, the loss of member numbers. I only note it because I had the cool # 7777

A great site that I visit (virtually) every day. All my Ovations except my 1st (C2078LX) was bought from folks here.