The official ABC traffic statistics audit for Boards.ie, Nov 2009

Tuesday, Jan 19th, 2010 by Darragh | Leave a Comment
Filed under: From the HQ | Tags: ,

ABC Nov 09 logo

Today we received our ABC certificate of our audited traffic figures for Boards.ie for November 2009.

Though technically a shorter month with a total of nine weekend days, we performed well, having a total of 1,793,932 unique user/browsers – the daily average was 83,622 and a grand total of 27,974,653 page impressions, or a daily average of 932,488.

For the graph geeks among you, that’s worked out as follows:

Traffic statistics for Boards.ie, November 2009

Statistics like this, coupled with Barry Hand’s post on the top websites in Ireland last December and indeed our own internal stats which show that this month alone we’ve hit over 20 million page views so far, averaging more than 1.1 million page views a day, and that our first full week had 24% more page views than the previous busiest week and finally that our busiest day on site seems to have been January 4, 2010, at 21:03 when we had 6,900 people on the site at once, mean realistically, only one thing.

We’re going to have to feed the hamsters more.

COVIES – a new online drama with a big Boards.ie connection

Tuesday, Jan 19th, 2010 by Darragh | Leave a Comment
Filed under: What's on Boards.ie | Tags: , , ,

It’s not often you see your boss naked in a bath on the internet, now, is it?

covies header and logo

We’ve been big fans of COVIES since we’ve heard of the idea and watched the trailers and now that it’s online over at http://www.thecovies.com, we’re delighted to give it a big shout out.

Starring, among many others, Tom Murphy (his screen name), we’re delighted to see this online drama, filmed in Westport, Co Mayo last year, hitting our screens.

Here’s the first episode:

http://www.vimeo.com/8629725

There’s quite a story behind the production of COVIES, one that director Len Collin has been sharing over on the official blog and particularly over on the main site. I’m particularly impressed with the three things that he hopes to achieve with this production:

That it will attract Filmmakers, production companies and tourists to the town of Westport. – The cooperation we received was second to none. People handed over their houses and businesses to us to use as locations, the council facilitated the closure of roads, we were leant everything from clothes and coffins to a pig.

That the show will launch the careers of some very talented creatives. The quality of acting for example is quite extraordinary. I believe we have found some genuine stars amongst the cast. Anna Ryder [Costume] is in my mind already a star designer [and I used to sleep on Paul Smith’s couch – so I should know]

The show will generate work for all involved.

The show will be in eight episodes, each approximately 15 minutes long. The show is aimed at adults – and therefore viewer discretion is therefore advised and it’s recommended that you should be over 18 to view. The first three episodes are online over on the website and new episodes will be added every Monday and Thursday.

You can give feedback on the show over on the COVIES boards.ie forum too. A lot of the cast and crew check in, so if you have any questions, I’m sure they’d be happy to answer them for you.

You can also join the group on Facebook and follow The Covies on twitter.

Boards.ie is supporting Good News Friday, offering you free positive publicity

Monday, Jan 18th, 2010 by Darragh | Leave a Comment
Filed under: From the HQ

Good News Friday

There’s an initiative happening on Friday called Good News Friday.

MediaExpress.ie have offered to send out postive press releases or news about any company, charity, organisation, event or person who has a bit of positive news to share.

We’re supporting them through awareness and also by offering to publish every* press release submitted, so the news has an online presence as well as hitting the inboxes of media researchers,  journalists and broadcasters throughout the country.

All the details can be found in this thread in our Public Relations Forum. Go on, take advantage and help make Friday a good news day.

New competition: Win tickets to No Drama’s ‘Wanted: One Body!’

Sunday, Jan 17th, 2010 by Darragh | Leave a Comment
Filed under: What's on Boards.ie | Tags: , , ,

We’re delighted to be supporting No Drama theatre’s upcoming production of Charles Dyer’s ‘Wanted: One Body!‘, so we are.

The group, formed on Boards.ie, has gone from strength to strength since May 2008 and their play, running from January 20 to 23, promises to be a great evening’s entertainment.

No Drama's poster for Wanted: One Body!

I’ve just put a competition live over on the Theatre & Performing Arts forum which also has more details on the play and its cast of Boardsies. Tickets are only €15 and should be bought online in advance.

Best of luck (or whatever the proper term is) to all those taking part – I, for one, am looking forward to seeing it!

Our first Q&A of 2010 will be with Keith Barry

Thursday, Jan 7th, 2010 by Darragh | Leave a Comment
Filed under: What's on Boards.ie | Tags: , , ,

It’s fun getting to do interviews for Boards.ie members – Dustin was a particular favourite, though was honoured by the David LaChapelle opportunity as well as with Minister Eamon Ryan, Damien Duff and John O Shea.

Next up is Keith Barry, mentalist, TV presenter and entertainer extraordinaire. I met Keith today at the launch of the 2010 Meteor Irish Music Awards and one thing led to another and I’ll be putting member’s questions to him next week.

Keith Barry

Like to ask Keith a question? Head on over to the Television Forum to do so!

When Santa can’t make it, it’s Boards.ie members to the rescue

Friday, Dec 18th, 2009 by Darragh | Leave a Comment
Filed under: What's on Boards.ie | Tags: , , ,

A little bit of seasonal cheer via our Derry forum. One of our members from Waterford posted

Hi all, I am after a particular toy for one of my kids from santa, but cant get it anywhere down here in the Rep. I have managed to track it down to the Toy R Us store in Derry, however they wont send it down to me. There are only 4 of them left on the shelf there but they are holding one for me.

What I am trying to find out is, would there be somebody kind enough to go in there and pick it up for me and I can pay you via paypal for the item and the postage and packaging of the item to send it on to me down South

I would be very grateful if someone could help me out

As is prone to happen on forums in boards, offers came in:

I may be in Derry next weekend although Im not 100% sure yet. If I am I don’t mind getting it.

I will definitely be in Derry tomorrow evening. I can collect it if you want.

If that falls through PM me as my sister lives in Derry and owes me a few favours and I have stuff delivered to Waterford on a Daily basis.

If smash cant help let me know, living two minutes away from that shop might come in handy yet

All offers were appreciated and it seemed to be all working out for the best:

Thanks guys, all going well smashey will be picking it up for me this evening. I believe it’s the last one that toys r us have in stock too. They are holding it for me until close of business today.

In the end, Smashey made the journey to help Santa out:

Item arrived safely here in Waterford this morning. Thanks again and also a big thank you to the rest of you that offered to help me out aswell.

Just proves how good boards.ie and its members actually is.

One of the challenges we have with this blog is to be able to bring the great stories about what Boards.ie can actually bring to people and how it benefits members. Certainly something like this shows the strength of personal connection, trust and having a wide user base on the site. Also a little bit of Christmas spirit, which is no bad thing at all.

How the Budget 2010 affected Boards.ie

Thursday, Dec 10th, 2009 by Conor | 3 Comments
Filed under: From the HQ | Tags: , ,

Well, we’re over the main hurdle, and we thought it might be interesting to see just how much our traffic or servers were affected by yesterday’s budget. We hosted two main conversations, one at http://www.boards.ie/budget and the other in After Hours.

During the budget speech, boards.ie served ~2000 pageviews/minute with ~25 new posts/minute. That’s 20-25% higher traffic than normal.

First up, the top-level forums in the Soc category. As you can see, Politics is usually the largest in the category but not by much. As the budget was on, it swelled to approximately 10 times its normal size.

In overall site terms, the bump was less pronounced, but we still had a clear increase in the number of people viewing the site:

In fact at one stage we had over 1,100 people on the site – an increase of over 30% from last year, apparently. One of our mods took a screen grab of the Active users box under the forum at around 4:45pm:

The number of pages requested per second also got a bump. You can’t see from the graph (which is done in 5 minute segments) but we hit almost 60 requests per second at one stage. Normally, that time of day is around 35-40 pages/second so that’s quite an increase.

One of the things we’re most happy about is that the number of bans/infractions or warnings didn’t increase significantly. Here’s a month-level graph of those and you’ll notice that the only anomaly was for the Ireland v France game:

In After Hours, one of our most popular non subject specific forums, there’s also a discernible upsurge on traffic. All the stats are in 5 minute samples, so there may be higher localised peaks but here’s the last 24 hours of AH traffic:

and the last 7 days:

The Boards.ie Q&A with David LaChapelle, world famous photographer

Wednesday, Dec 9th, 2009 by Darragh | 1 Comment
Filed under: What's on Boards.ie | Tags: , , , ,

When David LaChapelle was in Dublin in September for his American Jesus exhibition at the Sebastian Guinness Gallery, not only were Boards.ie members of the photography forum invited to a Q&A session with him, but I was lucky enough to grab him for nearly 20 minutes to ask him questions put to him by our members.

http://www.vimeo.com/7925867

LaChapelle is one of the world’s most high profile fine art photographers and directors and is renowned for his iconic pop and celebrity images that for over the past two decades which have continuously graced the pages of the leading fashion and entertainment magazines such as Vanity Fair, The Face, Rolling Stone, Vogue and Interview.

As the pr spin says: “Mixing glamour with surreal and comic fantasy, Lachapelle has created many memorable and striking images of luminaries such as Elizabeth Taylor, Pamela Anderson, Madonna, Elton John, Tupac Shakur, Michael Jackson and Britney Spears. His directing credits include music videos for artists such as Moby, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez.”

It was an honour to sit and listen to David’s talk and subsquently to interview him. My thanks to Canon and Edelman PR for helping arrange this for our members. Apologies for the delay in getting this live!

Neven Maguire and safefood advise members on how to cook a turkey properly

Tuesday, Dec 8th, 2009 by Darragh | Leave a Comment
Filed under: What's on Boards.ie | Tags: , , , , ,

Yes, that’s right, how to cook a turkey properly. People need to know these things, you know!

I was up in the WHPR offices yesterday to meet chef Neven Maguire who told Boards.ie members how to ensure that your turkey is cooked properly for Christmas.

It’s part of safefood’s new Christmas campaign about cooking a turkey properly – part of their campaign will be on Boards.ie and engaging with our members.

YouTube Preview Image

I’ve posted more of safefood’s advice in the Christmas forum. I look forward to welcoming them onto the site and I can see a big welcome and fit for them.

Feeling Christmassy? How about an exclusive offer/prize for our members?

Monday, Nov 30th, 2009 by Darragh | Leave a Comment
Filed under: From the HQ | Tags: , ,


From the “Let’s see your Christmas trees!” thread.

Do you own a company, run a service, work in marketing or PR or have access to a great prize, offer or event that you’d like to tell Boards.ie members about?

We’re getting in to the Christmas spirit on Boards.ie from tomorrow with a dedicated Christmas forum and we’d like to invite you to join in.

As well as the general Christmas and festive topics, I’m hoping to give a bit of value add to the members who interact there – prizes, advice, offers and the like.

I’m looking for exclusive offers, competitions and advice for our members from you. Maybe it’s 10% off to be used at your website? Maybe it’s an exclusive prize to help promote your company. Maybe you can advise people on things that they’ll need to know before Christmas. Maybe you’re running an event that you want people to know about. For all of the above, I’d like you to contact me.

It’s free. Did I mention that? That’s right. Free, with some conditions, as below.

The better the offer, the more information you can give me, the better the graphics, the more exclusive the content, the better it will be received. You’ll get a link to your website, a nice little blurb about you (if you provide one) and the thanks of every Boards.ie member who gets there.

The thing is though, while I know Boards.ie is a busy website – 3,080,230 unique visitors, spending 9:25 avg on site since October 1, 2009 according to our Google Analytics today – I can’t guarantee you any results. I can’t promise you people will go to your offer – or even the forum – or will take up your offer. That’s why I’m not charging for this, except the competition prize/offer. Oh, and we reserve full right to say no thanks.

Interested? Drop me a line at hello[at]boards.ie with details of what you’re thinking. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Oh and yes – Happy Christmas. ;)

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