Comic Genesis Forums

Hi, I run the webcomic The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! at
http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com

The comic is my first web page (other than my LiveJournal) and I don't know how to read all the information on my Stats Page. What is the difference between # of hits, # of visits, # of pages, # of sites, # of KBytes, and # of files? Which numbers will actually give me an idea of how many people are visiting the site?

(For that matter, what is considered a good # of visitors for a newbie like me? I've had the comic up and running since May.)

Also-- whenever I do any monkeying with the site myself (updating a new comic, moving things around in FTP, just viewing the posted comic, etc.), am I producing false positives on my Stats Page by doing so?

Thank you,
--Jim Cleaveland

Some definitions for you!

Sites is about a rough gauge of how many different folks are visiting (visits and sites should be close in number). Hits will usually be huge but counts all kinds of requests to the server so it lies! It doesn't tell you how many visitors you actually had. And I have no idea what is considered a good number. I mean, some of the Keenspotters get thousands of visits/sites per day.

Thank you. Although it's disappointing news. I'd hoped the important number was "hits," which is of course much higher.

Regarding my question about avoiding false positives-- Is there a way for me to view my own comic without it counting me as a visitor? Also, does it count me as a visitor every time I change something in FTP?

There are currently no way for you to go to your comic site and not have it register as a visit, and connecting via FTP does not count as a visit.

As far as I know, there isn't on the CG stats. You could consider signing up for a secondary counter: one that has the abiity to block certain IPs from the stats.

And FTP programs don't count as visits.

To get more visitors, you have to get your name out there. Join some comic sites. Try putting out fliers at the local college campuses. Put a link to it in your forum sig, for a start. People won't come unless they know it's there.

And, honestly, once you get enough regular readers, your own visits won't matter.

Just subtract 1 from your daily visits count if you've visited that day. I usually check my comic daily just to make sure nothing has brought the site down. As long as your IP doesn't change it shouldn't count as more than one visit (assuming like other counters visits is counted as hits from unique IPs)

Though if you're on dialup and have logged off and on more than once that day your IP may change and count an additional visit. It really won't alter your stats that much.

or I could be completely wrong, and keenspace/comicgen compiles its stats differently.

Black Sparrow wrote:As far as I know, there isn't on the CG stats. You could consider signing up for a secondary counter: one that has the abiity to block certain IPs from the stats.

And FTP programs don't count as visits.

To get more visitors, you have to get your name out there. Join some comic sites. Try putting out fliers at the local college campuses. Put a link to it in your forum sig, for a start. People won't come unless they know it's there.

And, honestly, once you get enough regular readers, your own visits won't matter.

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I suppose I'm just being anal, but yes, I would like to sign up for a counter that will block my own IP from the stats. How can I do that?

Also, what is a "forum sig"? I recall that one of the other help posts advised against starting a forum until you have a big enough readership that it won't stand embarrassingly idle.

What comic sites would you recommend?

Thank you.

bobadventures wrote:I suppose I'm just being anal, but yes, I would like to sign up for a counter that will block my own IP from the stats. How can I do that?

Statcounterallows you to block IPs and even set a blocking cookie to prevent your own visits from being logged. Presumably, there are other counters that allow you to do this, but I've never had any experience with them.

Also, what is a "forum sig"? I recall that one of the other help posts advised against starting a forum until you have a big enough readership that it won't stand embarrassingly idle.

It's short for "forum signature", and is attached to the end of every post one makes in a web forum (for example, mine contains a link to my site and a Charlie Brown quote). Click the Profile
link near the top of the forum to edit it.

What comic sites would you recommend?

There are quite a few out there that let you add your comic. Keep in mind that some require your site to have a minimum number of comics up before you can sign on with them.

http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/
http://www.onlinecomics.net/pages/
http://www.belfry.com/comics/
http://www.splurd.net/
http://www.choicecomics.net/

Thank you!

Thank you!