AboveTopSecret.com Goes Big Time --- May 11th, 2004.

May 11th was a huge day for ATS. Many of you saw the new records being broken at the bottom of the home page: Most total users online all at once: 937 on May, 11 @ 13:42 GMT Most registered users ever on ATS in one day: 904 on May, 12 @ 00:32 GMT Most unregistered guests ever on ATS in one day: 22090 on May, 12 @ 06:02 GMT We broke 900 members visiting in one day, and at one point, had nearly 1,000 simultaneous users on the discussion board. Our server statistics are also amazing for yesterday: We had 30,298 unique users visit the ATS domain. The users yesterday viewed 11,164 unique pages on ATS For a total of 375,977 page views. 828 different URL's referred to ATS, for a total of 18,333 visitors from these referrals. And 909 unique search terms brought 16,484 users from search engines. All of this added up to 11.7 gigabytes of traffic on one day. We surpassed our previous single-day record by 33%! www.abovetopsecret.com... There was a time when we would have been very happy to see this kind of activity in one month, and yesterday, through no overwhelming single-site linking to us, we reached these massive numbers because of the quality of members, and their contributions to denying ignorance. We've seen some petty bickering over issues of management style here in the past few days. And while there is always opportunity to improve any effort such as the ATS discussion board, these numbers indicate we are doing most things very right. No site receives 828 unique URL's linking to it when quality is a concern. No digital community experiences over 30,000 unique visitors in one day, each looking at an average of 12.4 pages without superior efforts of moderation and forum maintenance. And the only way to get 900 members to visit an online community in one day is to offer quality discussion, properly managed and maintained. Since our motto of "deny ignorance" first appeared under our logo at the top of the site, the mission has been to help more people understand the issues we discuss here. Thanks to all our members, and hard working staff, nothing proves the success of your efforts more than these amazing numbers. Well done. Very well done indeed. [Edited on 12-5-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

two words explain this...

TEAM EFFORT!

from simon and the admin down to the members and guests...

this isnt just staff but everyone involved in this site in any way shape or form that has helped to smash these records by leaps and bounds.

hats off to EVERYONE!!

And wow, after posting this, I just realized this all happened on the One-Year Anniversary of ATS going from a small shared webspace hosting service, to our first dedicated server. How appropriate! :

well I am just flabbergasted , words cannot express!!!!
congratulations to everyone!

This is... in one word... AWESOME.

kick-butt job, ATS staff and administrators!


I am curious though... how is it that you guys got this site to be so popular over time, if I may ask?

It's actually a very simple formula. 1) Create an environment that encourages interesting discussion + 2) Make sure it is managed so that the discussion is easy to find + 3) Put it all on a server that can handle high traffic + 4) Let the members do the rest _____________________________________________ = www.abovetopsecret.com...

Happy birthday to ATS
It drives us all bats
and one thing its good at
are all the neat stats!

[Edited on 12-5-2004 by Netchicken]

Wow, happy birthday ATS and a big well done to all the staff. Respect to ATS

Everyone of you all, even those pesky lurking guests, who eventually join and spread the anti-ignorance.

Excellent management
+
Great content
+
Constant expansion of features
+
Great members
--------------------------
This excellent place.

Congrats all, you've made this the best spot on the internet.

That is outstanding!!! Those numbers are incredible. This just goes to show the quality of the research being conducted on ATS, and the committment to excellence. Bravo Zulu ATS!!!


Mr. M

No advertising or spreading of the word of ATS's existence? I mean, I figured that there would have to be some kind of promoting in some shape or form...

Nope. Purely the concept of: "If you build it, they will come." and... Google is our friend.

ATS ROCKS

Happy B-Day ATS

Wow. That is most impressive. Considering that I found you guys via google in the first place, I suppose that you are right. Thanks for the response, SO.

What do u expect ATS rocks !!!!!

WOW!!!!

Now that's impressive William! Which threads were they looking at for the most?

awesome job to everyone!!! it seems like i keep reading more and more of these type messages! keep em comming!

Well, there have been over 11,000 different pages viewed on ATS yesterday, it's a pretty broad variety. The new threads on the Iraq abuse crisis and yesterday's beheading event are stand-outs though. Thanks to our new URL format, we are quickly indexed by both the standard Google search engine as well as the Google News crawler.

Yes, it would be most cool to know what google terms drove the most traffic to ats. Do you know what it is?
Is it interesting.

I am glad ats is doing well. As a lurker who finally registered..(THIS WEEK lol) I am glad to have been part of the happiness everone is spreading....HOWEVER I hope that the quality of the site does not begin to get watered down due to new members.
(Of course I am not a new member!!! :lol