• Registered: 2005-11-11
  • Posts: 122

Topic: So many guests online

For some reason it seems like on random days there will be loads of people on my forums -- yesterday there was a fluctuation of somewhere between 100 - 200 guests on the boards. Right now theres an excess of 350+ guests which is odd. First off, I don't have that many registered members (around 550, a bunch of them inactive), secondly, only 10-20 members actually login and post on any given day, and third, I can't find the source of where they're coming from.

So my question is, is there something possibly wrong with my PunBB? If so, how comes it eventually comes back down and then it returns to normal with 20-30 guests on the forum?

See for yourself: http://forums.programming-designs.com

Could it be bots? Has anyone else had similar problems? It doesn't really effect the site but it's just kinda weird and bugs me a little.

  • Smartys
  • Former PunBB Developer
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2004-04-30
  • Posts: 7,844

Re: So many guests online

Sounds like search engines spidering your forum tongue

  • sirena
  • sirena
  • Senior Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2006-04-06
  • Posts: 473

Re: So many guests online

What do your Apache server logs say?

Surely they must give you some useful information about this.

Specifically, have a look at a breakdown that shows pages viewed by visitor IP address for the day you noticed the guest numbers spike up.

That will help identify if you are being spidered aggressively, and/or whether there is some pattern to the activity that might be informative.

  • From: Leuven, Belgium
  • Registered: 2005-06-14
  • Posts: 2,653

Re: So many guests online

Or open up your online table and check smile