Lack of interest Could Xenforo record and report on forum-specific page impression statistics?

[Stuart Wright]

Something which I think would be a huge benefit to forums would be the ability to have better reports.
We already have data recorded on the total number of views of threads.
Could re record page view data which includes various information like the timestamp, node hierarchy, viewer IP and membership status?
It would be hugely beneficial to be able to see daily, weekly and monthly graphical reports on the number of page views on all of these criteria:

• by forum (with or without subforums) so that we can see which forums are the most popular and how they are growing
  
• by membership so we can separate the stats by members and non members and see how the split changes over time
  
• by country using PHP GeoIP so we can see which countries are most interested in which forums and how their relative popularity changes over time
  
• by thread so we can see which are the most popular threads in all or specified forums and how threads have become more or less popular over time.
• display unique and non-unique page view stats using the IP addresses so we can get an idea of the number of individual people who have viewed

and the ability to easily extend this so that addons can record and report on page views of showcases, media gallery images and albums and more (we'd want to record page impressions of our editorial)

This functionality isn't currently available in Google Analytics because it can't record which forums threads exist in.

Having the ability to report on the number of monthly page views of this forum plus that forum over the last six months would be hugely, hugely beneficial in understanding how forums are growing (or dying) and how much advertising potential there is in them.

If we record user ids, we could even analyse the paths people take navigating through our forums to help understand how they are used.

[Edit - perhaps this should go in the suggestions forum?]

 

[Alpha1]

• by thread so we can see which are the most popular threads in all or specified forums and how threads have become more or less popular over time.

It would be extremely useful to see which threads are currently attracting lots of views. It happens often that old threads suddenly attract tens of thousands of new views without the staff noticing it. When the staff does notice it, then the thread can be optimized and the influx of traffic channelled to more content. Related content can be started.

 

[Stuart Wright]

It would be extremely useful to see which threads are currently attracting lots of views. It happens often that old threads suddenly attract tens of thousands of new views without the staff noticing it. When the staff does notice it, then the thread can be optimized and the influx of traffic channelled to more content. Related content can be started.

Exactly. Sometime something on the site goes viral. It's very difficult to see what this is. A reporting system such as I have described could potentially be very useful in this regard.

 

[Alpha1]

For the same reason it would be very useful to see statistics for the top search phrases in the last weeks / days.
Its very valuable to see what users are searching for and if they are finding useful results or not. This would allow staff to be aware of trends and hot topics.

 

[Andy.N]

We can hook into these stats templates so display trending topics, most popular topic of the week, etc.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Recording this kind of information - which I am assuming from a database point of view is relatively trivial - could yield some fantastically insightful data about how our forums are being used. Imagine being able to display the hottest topics (as defined by a calculation based on the age of the thread and the number of views and replies) and being able to present a list of the hottest topics (also to members?) in each forum or category.

 

[Dakis]

Very nice suggestions. Especially integrating some type of admin alerts.

I think some of these you can check in your google analytics:

• by forum (with or without subforums) so that we can see which forums are the most popular and how they are growing
  
• by membership so we can separate the stats by members and non members and see how the split changes over time
  
• by country using PHP GeoIP so we can see which countries are most interested in which forums and how their relative popularity changes over time
  

I've been able to track visits by forum (including threads) after installing Digitalpoint's "better analytics" addon: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/better-analytics.2288/

It also used to include a separation between members/guests but apparently it was against google's rules (cause it involved also separate usernames) and it was removed.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Shawn's addon does give you limited Forum reporting, but it's not the same depth as we could get with reports from the core software.

 

[Dakis]

Yep absolutely, plus if they come from the core software they could be manipulated into actions much easier.

 

[digitalpoint]

This functionality isn't currently available in Google Analytics because it can't record which forums threads exist in.

Not entirely true... You can even cross reference by other data. For example, our most popular forums broken down (viewing a thread in the forum counts) by gender...





...or you can see stuff like forum areas used by country...

 

[digitalpoint]

Also, if you have the right tools, you can see trends of usage in each forum. For example... a percentage area chart (with a minimum plot point of 500 visits in a day to the forum)...

You can see historical trends/popularity of areas.