Watching my elonka.com webcounter roll over to another million...

VISITS

Total 2,004,594
Average Per Day 1,162
Average Visit Length 0:49
Last Hour 28
Today 299
This Week 8,136

PAGE VIEWS

Total 3,926,651
Average Per Day 1,388
Average Per Visit 1.2
Last Hour 40
Today 362
This Week 9,717

Site Meter - Elonka.com

As of November 1, 2008, all of the members.aol.com and hometown.aol.com websites will be no more.

I have mixed feelings about the closing of the AOL sites. I've been with AOL since the very early days, back before easy access to the internet. Back then, going "online" meant connecting to one of the individual services such as AOL, Prodigy, GEnie, or CompuServe, but there was no web, and no communication between the different services. Our Simutronics games started on GEnie, then we ran them off of 'nix servers from a basement in St. Charles, and then we opened portals to each of the services. To my knowledge, we were the first game company to ever have players from all of the different services all playing together in the same virtual world.

My first ever webpage was via my AOL site, back in the 90s. At first it was cool, but as AOL fell out of favor with the cyber-scene, I took a lot of heat for maintaining my AOL account. But I had loyalty to the service because of our games, because it was my "home" website, and because AOL dialup was often the most reliable way to get online, as I traveled cross-country and logged on from hotels while on the road. Even at hacker-cons, my AOL access would be enormously useful, as the hotel's network would often be down (or hacked), but I could dial onto AOL without a problem. On more than one occasion I'd have "leet" hax0rz standing in line in my hotel room to access the web via my lowly AOL dial-up connection, because it was the only way they could reliably check their email! And oh yes, having access to a dynamic AOL IP had its uses, too. ;)

The amount of FTP space that AOL allotted for each person's website was tiny, only 2MB per screen-name. For my Antarctica site, I remember splitting up my webpages, maintaining the HTML files in one screenname's space, the actual images under a different screenname, and anything geek-related (such as the PhreakNIC tutorial) under a different name, nova1337. :)

Eventually I of course outgrew AOL, and with HugMe's kind offer of webspace, I opened my elonka.com site in 2001. But I continued to maintain the old AOL site, and also hid some stuff here and there, such as a couple things that were needed to solve the 2002 Elonka Code. In fact, I'd be happy to keep that AOL site going forever, except that AOL is pulling the plug. So, I have my bittersweet farewell. I'm still planning on maintaining my aol.com email address... Anyone care to place bets on when that will go away too?

Since I had a fair amount of (old) crypto information at my AOL pages, such as my PhreakNIC Code tutorial, I have now mirrored everything over to my elonka.com site.

The members.aol.com/elonka page is now here

The PhreakNIC Code tutorial (which used to be at members.aol.com/nova1337) is now here.

Any of you that were really familiar with my site(s), knew that I had various sekrit files and pages and puzzles here and there. So if you want to know if I mirrored all of those too, the answer is, "Yes". :) Some of them may be a little tricky to deal with since the URLs have changed, but I think the general flavor is still there.

If anyone finds anything that's broken (or doesn't find something which you feel really should've been where you were looking), please contact me in IMs or email and I'll take a look.

In AOL-nostalgia,

Elonka :)

End of an era: The AOL websites shutting down

I'm curious to see what kind of web-traffic boost that I get from the PBS show. Other TV/radio shows have generally been a small bump -- they don't compare to the huge traffic that I get from something like a Slashdot or Wired article.

Google is still the search-engine-of-choice. However, hits from Wikipedia are also a steady presence -- they seem to come in more or less equally from multiple pages, but are only about 5% of my traffic. The majority comes from StumbleUpon, with my "Famous Unsolved Codes" page being the main draw. That's about 25% of traffic, followed by about 20% from search engines, a few percent from miscellaneous articles here and there (like Kim Zetter's "Wired" article sends me a steady stream of traffic). Also, not reflected in those numbers, are those visitors who aren't "referred" to my site, but just come in directly.

Anyway, here's the current summary:

VISITS

Total 1,036,534
Average Per Day 412
Average Visit Length 3:52
Last Hour 25
Today 187
This Week 2,887

PAGE VIEWS

Total 2,326,425
Average Per Day 809
Average Per Visit 2.0
Last Hour 49
Today 343
This Week 5,661

Referring domains

1,070 stumbleupon.com 26.8%
735 google.com 18.4%
226 en.wikipedia.org 5.7%
131 wired.com 3.3%
109 search.yahoo.com 2.7%
97 google.co.uk 2.4%
71 dailygalaxy.com 1.8%
50 images.google.com 1.3%
46 google.ca 1.2%
39 elonka.com 1.0%
38 google.co.in 1.0%
35 google.com.au 0.9%
19 npr.org 0.5%
18 google.de 0.5%
13 google.com.br 0.3%
12 search.live.com 0.3%
10 artdc.org 0.3%
10 google.com.ph 0.3%
10 google.fr 0.3%

Referring webpages:
1,021 http://www.stumbleupon.com/ref...lonka.com%2FUnsolvedCodes.html 25.5%
76 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos 1.9%
70 http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_...g/2007/07/angley-va----th.html 1.8%
69 http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/01/66334 1.7%
37 http://www.wired.com/culture/l...ws/2005/01/66334?currentPage=3 0.9%
34 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beale_ciphers 0.9%
34 http://www.stumbleupon.com/ref....elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html 0.9%
23 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography 0.6%
18 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5356012 0.5%
15 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kryptos 0.4%
12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_ciphertexts 0.3%
12 http://www.google.com/search?q...n-US:official&client=firefox-a 0.3%
10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Agapeyeff_cipher 0.3%
10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithy_code 0.3%
9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Sanborn 0.2%
9 http://search... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Well, my page views at elonka.com are running over 2.2 million right now, but another milestone is coming up with "unique users". As of this writing, the counter is at 999,225.

So, if anyone reading this happens to spot it rollover to 1,000,000 please let me know. I'll give you a cookie or something. ;)

Elonka :)

Happy odometer day to elonka.com

Site statistics, courtesy of Sitemeter:

VISITS

Total 872,795
Average Per Day 771
Average Visit Length 4:16
Last Hour 33
Today 244
This Week 5,397

PAGE VIEWS

Total 2,000,790 ***************************
Average Per Day 1,643
Average Per Visit 2.1
Last Hour 67
Today 477
This Week 11,504

Top referring domains
1,132 google.com 28.3%
461 stumbleupon.com 11.5%
236 en.wikipedia.org 5.9%
149 google.co.uk 3.7%
113 google.ca 2.8%
98 search.yahoo.com 2.5%
59 images.google.com 1.5%
58 matt-thornton.net 1.5%
57 blackstump.com.au 1.4%
57 elonka.com 1.4%
52 google.co.in 1.3%
50 demon.twinflame.org 1.3%
48 google.com.au 1.2%
39 wired.com 1.0%
28 google.com.ph 0.7%
22 google.nl 0.6%
22 search.msn.com 0.6%
16 google.co.nz 0.4%
15 ask.com 0.4%

Top referring webpages

461 http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.html 11.5%
71 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Kryptos 1.8%
66 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code 1.7%
57 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos 1.4%
50 http://demon.twinflame.org/arc.../2003/08/the_da_vinci_code.php 1.3%
49 http://www.matt-thornton.net/topics.php?topic=14&subcat=94 1.2%
43 http://www.blackstump.com.au/anew.htm 1.1%
41 http://www.google.com/search?h...n&q=kryptos&btnG=Google Search 1.0%
23 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=KRYPTOS 0.6%
22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Code 0.6%
19 http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=kryptos&meta= 0.5%
18 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,66334-0.html 0.5%
16 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=king tut CIA 0.4%
15 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=king tut cia 0.4%
14 http://elonka.com/kryptos/ 0.4%
14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beale_ciphers 0.4%
13 http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Sc.../Cryptology/Codes_and_Ciphers/ 0.3%
13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithy_code 0.3%
12 http://www.blackstump.com.au/new.htm 0.3%

Top referring search engines

1,118 google.com 28.0%
149 google.co.uk 3.7%
113 google.ca 2.8%
98 search.yahoo.com 2.5%
50 google.co.in 1.3%
47 google.com.au 1.2%
28 google.com.ph 0.7%
26 images.google.com 0.7%
22 search.msn.com 0.6%
22 google.nl 0.6%
16 google.co.nz 0.4%
15 ask.com 0.4%
14 google.se 0.4%
10 google.pl 0.3%
10 google.it 0.3%
10 google.dk ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

My elonka.com site is closing in on the "2 million page views" mark. At normal traffic levels it'll happen sometime during the summer, though if another big media blitz happens it could roll over in a few days. We'll see!

VISITS
Total 840,457
Average Per Day 1,233
Average Visit Length 4:26
Last Hour 53
Today 383
This Week 8,628

PAGE VIEWS

Total 1,928,104
Average Per Day 2,739
Average Per Visit 2.2
Last Hour 110
Today 882
This Week 19,173

Referring sites: - Wikipedia keeps climbing, and has overtaken stumbleupon. And Digg is no longer showing up in the top list

1,296 google.com 32.4%
264 en.wikipedia.org 6.6%
230 stumbleupon.com 5.8%
212 google.co.uk 5.3%
166 google.ca 4.2%
104 search.yahoo.com 2.6%
92 matt-thornton.net 2.3%
56 google.com.ph 1.4%
51 google.com.au 1.3%
44 search.msn.com 1.1%
42 demon.twinflame.org 1.1%
42 elonka.com 1.1%
41 wired.com 1.0%
38 google.co.in 1.0%
37 images.google.com 0.9%
28 npr.org 0.7%

Referring search engines: (Google google google)

1,729 Not referred from a search engine 43.2%
1,282 google.com 32.1%
212 google.co.uk 5.3%
164 google.ca 4.1%
104 search.yahoo.com 2.6%
56 google.com.ph 1.4%
51 google.com.au 1.3%
44 search.msn.com 1.1%
37 google.co.in 0.9%
24 images.google.com 0.6%
20 google.com.sg 0.5%
17 ask.com 0.4%
14 google.co.za 0.4%
11 google.be 0.3%
10 google.ie 0.3%
10 google.de 0.3%
10 google.co.nz 0.3%
9 google.nl 0.2%
9 google.es 0.2%

Search words: - The "king tut" and "one who knows" terms are from the webquest trivia quiz at danbrown.com

1,728 Not referred from a search engine 43.2%
547 kryptos 13.7%
181 king tut cia 4.5%
72 king tut and cia 1.8%
59 kryptos the one who knows 1.5%
51 king tut and the cia 1.3%
36 decrypted text of kryptos 0.9%
29 the one who knows 0.7%
27 the one who knows kryptos 0.7%
26 king tut, cia 0.7%
23 ciphers 0.6%
21 kryptos code 0.5%
19 kryptos "the one who knows" 0.5%
16 kryptos sculpture 0.4%
14 kryptos exact location 0.4%
14 cia and king tut 0.4%
14 37 57 6.5 n 77 8 44 w 0.4%
13 cia king tut 0.3%
12 king tut cia 0.3%

I was enjoying watching the "bumps" of traffic move through my website over the last week. According to sitemeter, the biggest traffic definitely came from the AOL news screen -- during the several hours that the story was up yesterday, traffic was consistently in the 1K-3K/hour range, and overall traffic for the day (31K visitors) was double what Slashdot did (15.8K). Highest Slashdot hour: 3,900. Highest AOL hour: 3,600.

Total "since the webcounter was turned on" traffic to elonka.com:

Total 806,187
Average Per Day 9,707
Average Visit Length 5:25
Last Hour 131
Today 1,036
This Week 67,951

PAGE VIEWS

Total 1,850,868
Average Per Day 30,536
Average Per Visit 3.1
Last Hour 252
Today 2,520
This Week 213,754

At the moment, traffic has scaled back to a dull roar, with hundreds per hour right now instead of thousands, but here's the "referring site" list for the last few thousand visitors:

2,076 articles.news.aol.com 51.9%
352 google.com 8.8%
313 nytimes.com 7.8%
273 wired.com 6.8%
80 schneier.com 2.0%
51 elonka.com 1.3%
43 en.wikipedia.org 1.1%
34 search.yahoo.com 0.9%
23 sploid.com 0.6%
21 stumbleupon.com 0.5%
20 google.ca 0.5%
19 aolsvc.news.aol.com 0.5%
19 slashdot.org 0.5%
14 google.co.in 0.4%
12 google.com.au 0.3%
10 google.com.ph 0.3%
10 images.google.com 0.3%
10 it.slashdot.org 0.3%
10 search.msn.com 0.3%

Before the AOL story, traffic was pretty evenly split between the NY Times, the Wired story, and Schneier's blog. Also, interestingly enough, though the story *did* show up on Digg, it never took off, and I never got more than 1% of hits from digg. I'm not sure what this means, since there was obviously plenty of public interest in the story -- Is "Digg" a fad that has passed, or is it that news links just don't get "dugg" anymore?

Anyway, passing along the data in case anyone's interested,

Elonka :)

This site will provide you with a DNS report for your domain. A very large percentage of domains have DNS problems; this site will help you find those problems and fix them.

Handy utility.

DNS Report

My Famous Unsolved Codes page got "Dugg" (again), resulting in massive traffic, from hundreds per day to many thousands per day, starting at about 1 p.m. on Sunday (traffic jumped from 40/hour, to 244/hour, to over 3000/hour).

My current "Diggs" score is 1124 (most other scores that day were in the single digits). This pushed my elonka.com site over the 1.5 million number in terms of total page views.

Total "elonka.com" traffic, according to sitemeter:

VISITS
   Total 687,705
   Average Per Day 2,780
   Average Visit Length 1:45
   Last Hour 268
   Today 4,391
   This Week 19,458

PAGE VIEWS

   Total 1,522,072
   Average Per Day 4,153
   Average Per Visit 1.5
   Last Hour 370
   Today 6,112
   This Week 29,069

The harmonics are interesting, though it's unclear on which site picked me up first.

Referring sites list, ranked by visits, of the last few thousand visitors:

2,264 digg.com 56.6%
468 reddit.com 11.7%
96 del.icio.us 2.4%
92 google.com 2.3%
83 elonka.com 2.1%
27 stumbleupon.com 0.7%
21 diggdot.us 0.5%
19 google.co.uk 0.5%
15 bloglines.com 0.4%
11 clan-senescence.com 0.3%
10 en.wikipedia.org 0.3%
9 images.google.com 0.2%
8 google.co.in 0.2%
8 mail.google.com 0.2%
8 pc-experts.org 0.2%
7 google.com.ph 0.2%
6 teoti.com 0.2%
5 digglicious.com 0.1%
5 google.ca 0.1%



At the AAAS conference over the weekend, there were some interesting numbers presented by academics who are studying internet usage, especially among teens (who are currently describing email as "something that you use to talk to old people"). I'd very much love to have some age demographic data on my website numbers, to learn how many of the visitors are from adult academics, and how many are teens who are following the latest "must go see the site that all my friends are looking at, so that I can say that I looked at it too...."

Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers (and digg.com)

This site will provide you with a DNS report for your domain. A very large percentage of domains have DNS problems; this site will help you find those problems and fix them. Also, the "Mail Test" tool will help find mail delivery problems for your domain. This site is a sister site to www.DNSstuff.com, which has many other DNS and networking tools.

Handy.

DNS Report