A few questions after upgrading to cloud hosting

[Max]

A user said they don't want to see the thread preview when browsing on mobile. When I browse I don't see that. Here is what they see, Does anyone know how to turn the thread preview off?

 

Also, the Who's Online numbers are WAY down since we moved. Is there a setting for how long it considers somebody online?

Thanks.

 

[Marc]

That looks like they are looking at an activity stream. If that is the case, have them click on the icon in the top right of that page to flick to condensed view

In terms of whos online, there is no difference in these. I remember you having redirects from an old URL. Have you ensured those are working?

[Adriano Faria]

1 hour ago, Marc Stridgen said:

That looks like they are looking at an activity stream. If that is the case, have them click on the icon in the top right of that page to flick to condensed view

Nope, it’s the forum view. See this as a guest: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/forum/528-invision-community-insider/

Probably there’s a setting somewhere in Forums app.

[Max]

21 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

That looks like they are looking at an activity stream. If that is the case, have them click on the icon in the top right of that page to flick to condensed view

In terms of whos online, there is no difference in these. I remember you having redirects from an old URL. Have you ensured those are working?

Can you let me know what you mean on the redirects?

Before the move to cloud hosting we would have hundreds of guests in who's online at all times. Now we have 20 or 30 it's a bit of a concern.

Thanks.

Oh and thanks for the help with the different forum views. That user is all set now.

[Dll]

It's because of the caching on the cloud - only the first guest every 10-15 minutes is counted, the rest hit the cache. 

[DawPi]

8 minutes ago, Dll said:

It's because of the caching on the cloud - only the first guest every 10-15 minutes is counted, the rest hit the cache. 

What caching? Could you elaborate?

IPS changed it and removed guests caching, see:

Quote

Deprecations and Removal Announcements

Completed in this release

• (....)
• Guest Page Cache removed (this is a legacy way to cache pages that replicates how a CDN works) - No action required

 

[Adriano Faria]

1 hour ago, DawPi said:

What caching? Could you elaborate?

 

[DawPi]

5 minutes ago, Adriano Faria said:

 

This is what I've mentioned above 😉

[Randy Calvert]

1 hour ago, DawPi said:

What caching? Could you elaborate?

IPS changed it and removed guests caching, see:

If you log out of the site and look at the headers, you’ll see cloud sites use AWS Cloudfront CDN to cache not just images but also the base HTML pages if you are not logged in. It’s not being done within the software.  

[Marc]

This would indeed be our server side caching, rather than the traditional guest caching you were referring to above

[Adriano Faria]

15 minutes ago, DawPi said:

This is what I've mentioned above 😉

 

7 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

This would indeed be our server side caching, rather than the traditional guest caching you were referring to above

 

[Max]

Okay thanks for the technical explanation. But I guess my question now is, has anyone else mentioned this being a problem? I know it is a vanity # but it makes the site look smaller. it was always a good look showing 800 people logged in. Street cred kind of thing.

Has anyone else been impacted by this?

[Randy Calvert]

When I moved, literally NO ONE commented on it.  I did have comments about how the site was faster.  And they LOVED the real time engagement features (who's viewing and who's typing).  Small price to pay for better speed!

By the way...  it also helped my PageSpeed results a lot.  🙂 

[Dll]

We saw a very similar thing with guest numbers much lower, but had no negative comments and I've not seen any negative results in terms of posts, active members etc. I think it's probably very much a vanity metric and not something to be too concerned about. 

[Max]

9 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

When I moved, literally NO ONE commented on it.  I did have comments about how the site was faster.  And they LOVED the real time engagement features (who's viewing and who's typing).  Small price to pay for better speed!

By the way...  it also helped my PageSpeed results a lot.  🙂 

 

8 hours ago, Dll said:

We saw a very similar thing with guest numbers much lower, but had no negative comments and I've not seen any negative results in terms of posts, active members etc. I think it's probably very much a vanity metric and not something to be too concerned about. 

Thanks. The vanity part is what I am having a hard time with. It just stinks to see the numbers go down that much. 

[Randy Calvert]

Think of it this way… trading vanity for improved user experience is a LOW price to pay.  Hahahaha

I would gladly trade it any day to improve performance and search rankings. 

[Markus Jung]

Is there no way to show the real number of guests online? It could also be helpful/important to sell advertising etc. 

[Marc]

59 minutes ago, Markus Jung said:

Is there no way to show the real number of guests online? It could also be helpful/important to sell advertising etc. 

Not where items are cached

[Dll]

4 hours ago, Markus Jung said:

Is there no way to show the real number of guests online? It could also be helpful/important to sell advertising etc. 

I'd have thought you'd want to use something like Google analytics for this sort of thing, rather than relying on an arbitrary guest count.

[Markus Jung]

Yes, I do have an analytics system in place. But still, the guest count is the first number that is seen publicly. 

[Max]

9 hours ago, Markus Jung said:

Yes, I do have an analytics system in place. But still, the guest count is the first number that is seen publicly. 

That's the exact thought I have. I know the real numbers not worried about that at all.

Others, even competitors, check the who's online and it looks like we lost 70% of our traffic.

[Max]

On 6/2/2023 at 11:17 AM, Markus Jung said:

Yes, I do have an analytics system in place. But still, the guest count is the first number that is seen publicly. 

Yes, this is pretty bad for us. Looks like our forum is old and dying which isn't the case.

 

Now that's at 4am when everyone is sleeping but still, it looks bad.

[Markus Jung]

1 hour ago, Max said:

Looks like our forum is old and dying which isn't the case.

Same here. Activity has, in fact, declined a bit over the years, but not visitors. 

[Dll]

Quote

I really like this community with lots of active members and content that I'm interested in, but the guest count is far too low, so I won't return.

Said literally no-one, ever. 

[Max]

On 6/5/2023 at 6:02 AM, Dll said:

Said literally no-one, ever. 

Yes as I stated this is a vanity stat. But it is important advertisers check things like that.

It is an issue. Competitors look too, and it is nice to get in their heads a bit.