I like data, let’s do some data!
Summary
Traffic levels are very similar to the level they were at before the migration. About 20%-25% down, but steadily increasing again. The subreddit is definitely picking up a good bit, but it’s way lower traffic than the discourse (I don’t have data, I just read both and that’s my impression), the quality of discussion is IMO much lower, and it’s reddit, gross.
I agree the site feels slower, that might partially be layout, it might be a valid and subjective evaluation of the kind of posts (I know I don’t make as many of my ridiculously huge planning posts as I used to, I blame my toddler), and it might just be faulty memory (remember the good old days?), and yes, some of it does seem to be less posting, but about 20% less, not something crazy. I’d love to hear any suggestions you have to improve the situation.
Analysis
There are only a few fields we can compare directly:
Topics: Is roughly comparable, maybe down a little. It was always between 0 and a handful of topics a day, averaging ~100 a month. Comparing September and the last 30 days, it’s down from 130 to 101, but looking at month-over-month on smf, that’s within normal variance. Compared to last March at 81 topics, activity is up.
Posts: ~50 a day, typically a bit over a thousand posts a month, this is very similar. Comparing September on smf to the last 30 days on discourse, it’s down from 2,145 to 1,300, but again, previous months in 2017 had lower traffic on smf. Compared to last March at 1,404 posts, it’s extremely close.
A bunch of the stats look like they’ve dropped, but aren’t actually comparable for one simple reason, the smf site was absolutely FLOODED with bots. Do you believe there were 1,353 legit new users in September? I sure as hell don’t. Were there nearly 2 MILLION legit page views in September? Hah.
The new user count, page views and most online stats were completely dominated by bots. As of yesterday, on a completely idle, shut-down site, there were 54 unique visitors and 27,000 page views. That’s either people reading archived topics on a dead forum (I REALLY doubt it), or it’s bots trying to pretend they’re real users so they don’t get banned.
Data
Snapshot of current discourse stats:
| Today | Yesterday | Last 7 Days | Last 30 Days | All | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| User Visits | 67 | 87 | 582 | 2.3k | 9.5k |
| New Users | 0 | 2 | 12 | 47 | 4.1k |
| User Profile Views | 6 | 14 | 387 | 711 | 2.3k |
| Topics | 2 | 1 | 31 | 101 | 14.0k |
| Posts | 18 | 48 | 399 | 1.3k | 305k |
| Time to first response | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 34 |
| Topics with no response | 0 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 1.4k |
| Likes | 58 | 2 | 62 | 774 | 1.9k |
| Flags | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| Bookmarks | 0 | 0 | 4 | 22 | 153 |
| Emails Sent | 23 | 26 | 380 | 1.3k | 8.6k |
| Accepted solutions | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 29 |
| Pageviews | Today | Yesterday | Last 7 Days | Last 30 Days | All |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 3.7k | 5.0k | 45.4k | 175k | 693k |
| Web Crawlers | 1.3k | 1.7k | 20.4k | 79.1k | 260k |
| Logged In | 679 | 1.4k | 9.7k | 36.6k | 178k |
| Anonymous | 1.7k | 2.0k | 15.3k | 60.1k | 253k |
Last month of activity on smf site:
| New Topics | New Posts | New Members | Most Online | Page views | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 2017 | 130 | 2145 | 1353 | 114 | 1839457 |
| 2017-09-01 | 4 | 54 | 27 | 84 | 72414 |
| 2017-09-02 | 1 | 49 | 40 | 114 | 76837 |
| 2017-09-03 | 0 | 42 | 39 | 73 | 94723 |
| 2017-09-04 | 7 | 59 | 28 | 80 | 89842 |
| 2017-09-05 | 3 | 58 | 33 | 72 | 81486 |
| 2017-09-06 | 2 | 38 | 29 | 84 | 63444 |
| 2017-09-07 | 1 | 80 | 29 | 81 | 69909 |
| 2017-09-08 | 1 | 46 | 37 | 83 | 67380 |
| 2017-09-09 | 3 | 76 | 42 | 86 | 75404 |
| 2017-09-10 | 6 | 78 | 48 | 87 | 44532 |
| 2017-09-11 | 1 | 68 | 46 | 91 | 48626 |
| 2017-09-12 | 3 | 70 | 55 | 96 | 45777 |
| 2017-09-13 | 4 | 94 | 50 | 97 | 51365 |
| 2017-09-14 | 5 | 78 | 45 | 114 | 56366 |
| 2017-09-15 | 4 | 69 | 45 | 101 | 75863 |
| 2017-09-16 | 1 | 26 | 48 | 84 | 52740 |
| 2017-09-17 | 4 | 45 | 35 | 74 | 46258 |
| 2017-09-18 | 6 | 60 | 49 | 85 | 51889 |
| 2017-09-19 | 6 | 112 | 58 | 73 | 72036 |
| 2017-09-20 | 3 | 112 | 69 | 69 | 52210 |
| 2017-09-21 | 8 | 82 | 48 | 69 | 53727 |
| 2017-09-22 | 3 | 57 | 48 | 67 | 56275 |
| 2017-09-23 | 7 | 67 | 58 | 82 | 59165 |
| 2017-09-24 | 3 | 74 | 45 | 71 | 57300 |
| 2017-09-25 | 5 | 97 | 58 | 68 | 53178 |
| 2017-09-26 | 6 | 92 | 57 | 92 | 47854 |
| 2017-09-27 | 4 | 107 | 47 | 88 | 48959 |
| 2017-09-28 | 15 | 106 | 54 | 91 | 52969 |
| 2017-09-29 | 9 | 66 | 39 | 69 | 55831 |
| 2017-09-30 | 5 | 83 | 47 | 86 | 65098 |
Digging further into the past, there’s the rest of 2017 before September:
| New Topics | New Posts | New Members | Most Online | Page views | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2017 | 103 | 2079 | 802 | 123 | 2155637 |
| July 2017 | 109 | 1795 | 48 | 131 | 3034578 |
| June 2017 | 125 | 1298 | 1197 | 111 | 2282331 |
| May 2017 | 97 | 1265 | 1295 | 105 | 2748862 |
| April 2017 | 111 | 1340 | 2930 | 119 | 3838861 |
| March 2017 | 81 | 1404 | 868 | 98 | 2708094 |
| February 2017 | 118 | 1462 | 273 | 105 | 3465931 |
| January 2017 | 107 | 1877 | 212 | 107 | 3512873 |