APR '08: 1,308 registrations, 5,357 new topics, 62,155 replies, 2,382 PM's sent and 2,060,769 topic views.

Oh dear Seems we still have a steady decline, hopefully with these latest changes over the past few days we'll see some sort of improvement.

Maybe you need some top heavy lovelies on the front page.

Changes are all good, but maybe look in to re-advertising Neowin. Getting its name out on the web again and giving people a reason to come here. I know that this is a tech site that helps people with tech related issues, but we need to give other reasons to come and advertise those features.

Im not sure what you could advertise or use, but im sure with some thought you could think of something.

The number of pageviews are still going up

Consider the recent changes akin to renovation works, making the place more inviting to newcomers.

I am sure we can do better for the month of May!

Don't worry about the stats. The main thing is that we regulars love the place.

Yes, but you need to let people know about it and advertise it, otherwise how are newcomers going to know about the changes, or even about Neowin at all?

Views should go up soon especially with the big Laptop Competition coming soon and with the newly renovated forums.

Have some more graphs! Each stat averaged over the number of days in each month

How does this measure up in terms of seasonal trends? Spring and Summer generally means people are going outside and stuff ya know?

There is no visible seasonal trends on Neowin. I actually run a personal Neowin statistics tally, and it seems like we're back to the 2002/2003 registration rate.

We'll bounce back

Radish™

I'm sure it can be explained away somehow. In the meantime this is the forum where I spend most of my time on the net (even though I'm not a heavy poster). You're doing a good job, guys.

We're entering the summer months, people wanna be outside, so less posting and less registering

Outside? I never leave the house I know not of this outside you speak of!

What is this "Outside" that you are referring to? Is that the large room with the super bright light that is outside of my front door?

Seriously though, I wouldn't be concerned with a drop in stats aside from the ad revenue aspect of things, it might just mean we have more quality posts and less 1 offs.

I would be a little concerned. From a user perspective, things have not "seemed right" for the last 6-8 months.

Wouldn't that be somewhat offset by the whole southern hemisphere entering winter (i.e. more people inside)?

... Why you little!!

change the interface to something that is easy on the eyes and more soothing darker and change the front page to look like a news site instead of a forum layout with more vibrant but smooth

lol, you sound like a pop-record producer.

---------------------
I wonder if the whole "renewed browser war"/"acid 3 shootout" stuff a while back contributed to this decline any.

Lots of people get sick of that stuff, and there was a TON of it on here in February (with the firefox3 betas) and March (acid3).

The whole southern hemisphere?
just playin man.

Lol that you actually took the time to do that!

thats funny i didn't notice that but i was thinking of something like this but it's a very rough draft

With all due respect...

Ew. That is very hard on the eyes and I think that could drive people away. Perhaps something more darker could be implemented but white on black is not the answer.

I'm one of the members joined you at April
Hope to be better at May

no i don't want white text it would drive me crazy too but i would choose a medium blue, and i said it was a quick 5 min edit that i did in PS

Regardless of season I always check this site at least once or twice a day. Maybe even more if I happen to have a day off from school and stuff.

My mother told me never to speak of this room of the outside, enter it, and the evil spirits of the light will burn your skin.

Okay, all due respect, but the interface is not what's the problem. I've noticed that I tend to visit other sites more often now than before, mostly due to the fact that they update their articles much more quickly than we do - and not just "technology" related news, but new hardware that pushes the boundaries, and articles that you might never see here (I'm still waiting for the FPN to show that Cubans can now buy computers legally, for instance). How often do you hear "old news"?

You've done an amazing job with this site, but it might be time to think outside the box, and add some categories to the main page that aren't just "main","software", and "gamers". After all, you can't continually add new articles to the "main" section, it would just push all the old ones out before some people can get through them (except for those like me who check several times a day).

Just a suggestion, thanks.

There isn't as much news as there used to be making the Front Page, and some of it isn't high quality. A lot of the good stuff gets left behind in Breaking News (BPN). I used to contribute quite a lot to the Front Page but I stopped because I didn't want to have to post it twice (to Breaking News and Front Page).

My advice: All tech news should be submitted to Breaking News by default, and Admins/mods should pick out the best news for the Front Page.

On the other hand, there has been a noticable increase of quality inhouse material making it to the Front Page, which I think is great!

+1 - Busy time of year this, im preparing for exams starting tomorrow, and university is wrapping up for graduation so people's priorities shift etc.

Probably see registrations increase after the summer, when people are back in doors with the luke warmth of their PC's.

People go away on holidays but thats it really, I will still continue to visit and spam I mean post

Start offering Warez and Porn.

Problem solved.

Well, a new problem of server strain would probably erect ... amongst obvious legal questions.

Being serious, the fact it's summer is too true.

It's far too hot for me to be sitting in my room, im off to drink beers at a mates soon. Screw studying in this weather

[geek chat] My new room temperature thanks to the weather is pushing my overclock to the max

Priceless

nerds don't like the outside world.

You can notice a huge number drop from Nov 07 to April 08.

roughly: 500 less registrations, 900 less new topics, 5500 less replies, 1000 less PM's, and 100,000 less topic views...

something weird is going on.... Is neowin dying

Couldn't agree more. Which is too bad for the classes I should be studying for, as exams start later this week for me

-Spenser

Nah, far from it.

Message boards are just popping up left right and center and many of them dilute the internet base.

Thing is, people always bounce back to the big, widely known sites - Visiting a new message board can seem fresh and interesting, but many new boards will burn out pretty quickly seeing as it's hard to differentiate what is actually different between techie sites.

Most follow the same rules and have roughly the same content - Of course rules can be enforced differently as the board "police" will change from board to board, but I'd hope people realise we actually have a good balance on here.

Laid back at times, strict other times - 99% of the time, in the right occasions though

If you want an example of a board dieing out, visit ieXbeta. My home before Neowin, but we lost most of our active members - Most of the old timers/regulars just hang out now. No one's fault, just the dilution in the techie world, and some people moving onto other things. ieXbeta was never a board of this size though, keep that in mind. Although we were fairly decently sized.

One of the biggest weapons in your arsenal though is getting guests to sign-up. That should be obvious with the amount of guest views/guests lurking you see on boards this size.

I mean, at the time of writing this - 2407 guests, 238 members - That is roughly 10 guests for every member

As the admins/mods/members of a board this size, you should always be looking for ways to

a) Encourage guests to signup, not force, just encourage.

b) Encourage lurkers/new signups to actively post and take part - Members can do that as well by being welcoming, and not hostile to new members. Best new members don't visit the GH as their first port of call

c) Encourage people to come back - Lots of people may signup to ask one question/say one thing and never come back - Again a lot to do with how your current member base interacts - Be nice and help newbies, they help the boards future And may also eventually donate to get access to Neowin's yearly drink-a-thon held at Neobond's house in Holland Ooops, said too much?

I'm serious though, us subscribers get it all

We all look for any excuse, don't we?

Early next week for me!

Neowin is not dying. We are just having a lean patch. Atleast the regulars are going nowhere!

2747 guests, 292 members, 8 anonymous members ...
Yeah, obviously some guests are members who don't login, but there are still a WHOLE lotta people you need to attract. There has to be some more incentives to sign up apart from posting on the forum .. any ideas?

I don't see as many debates about subjects these days and if there is posts get deleted and threads get closed. Not having a go but threads don't always have to have a major reason... And everyone likes a good debate about things.

Thats my view anyways... I visit the site a fair bit and don't post that much.