Guests vs members

[Tom H]

I am puzzled when I look at the "members on line now" sidebar on the Forum home page. Typically it shows maybe 70 people on our forum, but only 3 or 4 are members and the rest are guests, and a couple are robots. Are there really that many people interested in Sunbeams who have not joined our forum? Maybe many are MGB or Triumph fans checking what an Alpine solution to an issue might be. Or are they likely just more robots, but better disguised?

Anyone have a good explanation? I have no problem sharing our knowledge with non members, but I am curious.

Tom

 

[Barry]

Tom,

"Members Online Now" only shows those members who are logged-in.

The "guests" category includes all forum viewers (other than robots / web crawlers) who are not logged-in.

If I am viewing the forum without logging-in, I am counted as a guest. If I login, my category changes from "guest" to "Members Online Now".

I do not normally log-in unless I want to start a thread, reply to a post, check for PM's, etc., so I am typically counted as a guest. No way for me to be sure, but I suspect that a significant number of members also view the forum without logging-in.

HTH

 

[mikephillips]

I'm the same way, if I'm just browsing posts I'll normally not login.

 

[Ken Ellis]

I'm usually logged in when I visit, as I click the "remember me" box when logging in. Only need to re-log (?!) if I close my browser or re-boot/restart computer. I think there's a timer on recent activity (5-15 minutes) that prevents one from being noted as member/logged-in if one hasn't maneuvered on the site within that time. In other words, if I'm gone for 2 hours it doesn't say I'm 'here'.