Photics.com & GuildWars.us January 2010 Web Report

With the launch of a new website and a new game, I thought it was important to take a look at the Photics.com / GuildWars.us web traffic reports. Last month was actually a successful month for the website. Thanks to my online game designed for Android phones, there was a lot of website activity and a lot visitors. It wasn’t record breaking traffic, but the reports showed that I made some good decisions in the management of this website. Yet, this is only a beginning. There’s a lot more work to be done. March 2009 still stands as the benchmark to surpass.

First up, the GuildWars.us stats. The site is still new. The traffic will increase gradually as more and more websites link to the site. Eventually, and more and more Guild Wars fans will start visiting the site.

Hits
Total Hits...............................161,980
Visitor Hits.............................154,926
Spider Hits................................7,054
Average Hits per Day.......................5,061
Average Hits per Visitor......................43
Cached Requests...........................12,120
Failed Requests............................1,356

Page Views
Total Page Views..........................58,491
Average Page Views per Day.................1,827
Average Page Views per Visitor................16

Visitors
Total Visitors.............................3,604
Average Visitors per Day.....................112
Total Unique IPs...........................2,315

Bandwidth
Total Bandwidth..........................2.56 GB
Visitor Bandwidth........................2.26 GB
Spider Bandwidth.......................314.24 MB
Average Bandwidth per Day...............82.03 MB
Average Bandwidth per Hit...............16.59 KB
Average Bandwidth per Visitor..........656.54 KB

The February report for GuildWars.us should be interesting to see, as I’m planning to switch back to VBulletin tomorrow. WordPress MU was fun, but then the spammers started running amok. I could easily swat them away, but there was another big complaint. The GuildWars.us blogs were hard to find. The new system should improve the situation. Considering that I’m bringing back the forums, I don’t want to manage two content management systems.

OK, now for the main course. Photics.com had a decent month. This is mainly because of the relaunch of Guild Wars: Conquest. The game is still in the beta stages, so this is encouraging.

Hits
Total Hits.............................1,464,999
Visitor Hits...........................1,381,027
Spider Hits...............................83,972
Average Hits per Day......................45,781
Average Hits per Visitor......................45
Cached Requests..........................134,552
Failed Requests...........................41,993

Page Views
Total Page Views.........................830,054
Average Page Views per Day................25,939
Average Page Views per Visitor................27

Visitors
Total Visitors............................30,918
Average Visitors per Day.....................966
Total Unique IPs..........................13,877

Bandwidth
Total Bandwidth.........................13.66 GB
Visitor Bandwidth.......................12.41 GB
Spider Bandwidth.........................1.25 GB
Average Bandwidth per Day..............437.12 MB
Average Bandwidth per Hit................9.78 KB
Average Bandwidth per Visitor..........420.92 KB

With approximately 50,000 player attacks last month, I feel a little bad. The most active part of my site is where people from all over the world attack each other. Seriously, there’s like no downtime. Every hour of the day, there’s fighting going on.

With traffic so constant, there isn't a clear window for site maintenance. Even at 5 AM, it could annoy a lot of people.

I created Photics.com to rid the world boredom, to add creativity to my life and others. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Yet, I can’t argue with the success. With 2500+ accounts, that’s a pretty good start. In February, a significant update to the game should occur. A mass email is planned, perhaps before and after the update. But unfortunately, these numbers don’t surpass the March 2009 highs. 31,000 visits is a pretty good number, but it was much higher last March. I’m not going to be satisfied until I pass those earlier highs.

But wow, when you really think about it, these numbers are insane. Online, I’m like a rock star. These kind of numbers fill sporting arenas. But as web standards go, it’s not that great. Photics.com / GuildWars.us has to get better.