Author Topic: One Circle Dock download for every second so far! (Read 32037 times)

Markham · « **on:** January 28, 2010, 07:08 PM »

Yes, you read that correctly! Each second, someone somewhere in the world has downloaded Circle Dock since v1 was released on January 1 this year. How do I know this? A few days ago, I asked "mouser" (this site's administrator) if there were any metrics they could install on the download site so that we have some idea of the number of downloads and thus gauge its popularity. Those metrics were installed yesterday and as part of that exercise, a file containing raw data for the period ending yesterday was made available to me from which I was programatically able to extract the number of downloads for the period 1st to 28th January - a fairly massive 226,720 and still climbing! If we include all Circle Dock downloads since I became involved in its development, that number is close to 400,000!

From a random sample of IP addresses, it's quite clear that Circle Dock is being used in many countries where English is not the first language from which one can infer that its true, multi-language capability is widening the program's appeal. Brazil for example has four web sites featuring Circle Dock, one of which features a screenshot of Circle Dock's main settings dialog in Portuguese.

Thank you dear user, for downloading and using Circle Dock and a big thank you to "mouser" and the DonationCoder team for hosting this great program. I think you can confidently expect to receive a similar number of "hits" next month when we plan to roll-out the next release!

Mark

lotusrootstarch · « **Reply #1 on:** January 28, 2010, 07:17 PM »

Congrats Mark! Loving CD so far...

226,720 is indeed a massive number for downloads during such a short period, but have you taken into consideration that download managers these days open multiple processes for a single file so 8 or more "downloads" may actually be from one user?

Archon of Fate · « **Reply #2 on:** January 28, 2010, 07:18 PM »

Congrats! All of you have done a fantastic job with this program, keep up the good work.

mouser · « **Reply #3 on:** January 28, 2010, 07:21 PM »

cricledock is insanely popular.. but i have lingering feeling something might be wrong with the stats -- i've asked gothic to look into it.. im not sure just seems a little high, even for such a wonderful tool. maybe there is a way we can test by putting a copy of the file on another server like sourceforge and redirecting for a few days and comparing counts?

lotusrootstarch · « **Reply #4 on:** January 28, 2010, 07:33 PM »

Maybe total traffic/bw stats during that period can serve as a measurement? (9GB/9MB per download) =~ 1000 downloads?

sgtevmckay · « **Reply #5 on:** January 28, 2010, 08:13 PM »

I am of somewhat mixed feelings regarding this.

I have been running a push...I am up to 30+ sites now and am looking to have placed to other sites (will discuss needed stuff with Markham Later)
The LifeHacker is a huge push, but I would not have expected more that 50,000 to 55,000 dl's from this.
Most of these other sites are smaller sites, and I am gauging response. Before the big push

Mouser did say at one time that CD was only second to F.A.R.R.
And I have yet to start the big push to DevArt, as I have been attempting to stem a flow that I know will come to the forums.

I am making a simple comparison here, and although there is a larger call for Docks/Launchers than Desktop System Monitoring tools.
It still took Rainmeter 5+ Months before we broke our first 1,000,000 download

The numbers may be correct taking in that time line, but that just scares the devil out of me.

Google Code site makes this easy to track (with third party DL site exceptions), so I am do not know exactly how to feel.

I will reserve judgment......
I do not know if I can take any kind of credit for that type of return

The one thing I know for sure....I am getting some of the damnedest comments so I know the interest in CD is active once again.

On a final Note.....Rainmeter is downloaded in several Asian countries and central arid countries more than anywhere else.
So atleast that correlates

Markham · « **Reply #6 on:** January 28, 2010, 11:37 PM »

Congrats Mark! Loving CD so far...

226,720 is indeed a massive number for downloads during such a short period, but have you taken into consideration that download managers these days open multiple processes for a single file so 8 or more "downloads" may actually be from one user?
-lotusrootstarch (January 28, 2010, 07:17 PM)

Judging from the thus-far limited stats that are broken down, download managers accounted for just 1 download (that's in the 3 or so minute window between the tool starting and me accessing the stats late last night). The most popular download "tool" was Internet Explorer, followed by Firefox and then Google Chrome. Curiously there was even a download to a Linux box! The metrics tool is smart enough to recongnise download managers.

When the metrics tool initiated yesterday provides some more meaningful data, I'll post a message with the results.

Mark

Markham · « **Reply #7 on:** January 28, 2010, 11:47 PM »

cricledock is insanely popular.. but i have lingering feeling something might be wrong with the stats -- i've asked gothic to look into it.. im not sure just seems a little high, even for such a wonderful tool. maybe there is a way we can test by putting a copy of the file on another server like sourceforge and redirecting for a few days and comparing counts?
-mouser (January 28, 2010, 07:21 PM)

I've just spent the last six hours scanning through the raw data for the first 27.5 days - all 5,798 pages of it - and there quite a lot of duplicate IP Addresses but only until the end of November. So the data appears kosher to me. The nice thing about Awstats is that the referring web site is recorded and for that four minute window I mentioned in an earlier reply, all the referrals came from sites in non-English speaking countries and from pages that feature Circle Dock.

Before we condemn the log, I think we should wait until the end of February by which time Awstats will have been running for a month and we'll get a clearer indication as to the validity of the previous log file.

Let's not burst the bubble and enjoy our success!

Mark

lotusrootstarch · « **Reply #8 on:** January 28, 2010, 11:55 PM »

Awesome!

Markham · « **Reply #9 on:** January 28, 2010, 11:57 PM »

The LifeHacker is a huge push, but I would not have expected more that 50,000 to 55,000 dl's from this.
-sgtevmckay (January 28, 2010, 08:13 PM)

Unfortunately Awstats wasn't running when that article appeared and the old log file doesn't contain any detail other than IP Address and activity (ie a download, view a web page, etc.) so I really can't say what effect that article had.

Mouser did say at one time that CD was only second to F.A.R.R.

Have we topped it, I wonder

.

And I have yet to start the big push to DevArt, as I have been attempting to stem a flow that I know will come to the forums.

Judging from the lack of activity on this forum, given the download count, I wouldn't worry too about that -- which is a good thing as it means you can concentrate on the marketing!

Mark

mouser · « **Reply #10 on:** January 28, 2010, 11:57 PM »

There is no doubt that circledock is EXTREMELY popular... and growing more so.
Furthermore gothic and i seemed to have confirmed that the bandwidth numbers are real.. peaking at 63GB of circledock downloads YESTERDAY ALONE.

Screenshot - 1_29_2010 , 12_08_44 AM.png

One Circle Dock download for every second so far!

The remaining issue however, is that there seems to be an enormous amount of PARTIAL CONTENT download errors.. and a chunk of that large bandwidth may come from the server failing during serving downloads, causing a kind of cascade of re-downloads, etc.

Of course this only happens if there is huge demand for the files on the server so there is no question about the large spike in # of downloads.. the only question now is really whether those numbers are a true reflection of downloads, or are somewhat inflated by failed downloads by a server struggling and somewhat failing to keep up with demand.

I mean 63gb in one day is pretty much an insane amount of downloads -- just not in the realm of what i would expect regardless of how much attention it got. As nice as it would be if this stat was real.. it just doesn't seem possible to me...

No matter how you look at it, it's a testament to what you guys have done with CircleDock -- people can see it being actively improved and supported and are reacting positively to it.

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:17 AM »

Just as a comparison, the entire main DC site does about 25gb a day on a regular daily basis, and that includes the entire forum, all of the dc software, skrommels software, etc.

Markham · « **Reply #12 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:19 AM »

That's roughly 7,800 downloads!

As for partial downloads, I believe Awstats only records completed downloads but even if it doesn't, we can easily spot this from the main information screen.

The busiest time yesterday appears to have been between 16.00 and 20.00, but I'm not sure if that's GMT or not.

Mark

sgtevmckay · « **Reply #13 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:22 AM »

either way I gotta tell ya: I am so excited, and I need good news now....It just made my day

Markham · « **Reply #14 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:23 AM »

You're seeing information that I can't see

. I'm only seeing information from 16.15 on January 28.

Mark

There is no doubt that circledock is EXTREMELY popular... and growing more so.
Furthermore gothic and i seemed to have confirmed that the bandwidth numbers are real.. peaking at 63GB of circledock downloads YESTERDAY ALONE.
(see attachment in previous post)
The remaining issue however, is that there seems to be an enormous amount of PARTIAL CONTENT download errors.. and a chunk of that large bandwidth may come from the server failing during serving downloads, causing a kind of cascade of re-downloads, etc.

Of course this only happens if there is huge demand for the files on the server so there is no question about the large spike in # of downloads.. the only question now is really whether those numbers are a true reflection of downloads, or are somewhat inflated by failed downloads by a server struggling and somewhat failing to keep up with demand.

I mean 63gb in one day is pretty much an insane amount of downloads -- just not in the realm of what i would expect regardless of how much attention it got. As nice as it would be if this stat was real.. it just doesn't seem possible to me...

No matter how you look at it, it's a testament to what you guys have done with CircleDock -- people can see it being actively improved and supported and are reacting positively to it.
-mouser (January 28, 2010, 11:57 PM)

sgtevmckay · « **Reply #15 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:24 AM »

Do we need to consider getting up some mirrors?

lotusrootstarch · « **Reply #16 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:31 AM »

Hmm, strange... there doesn't seems to be a big increase in "Number of Visits" or "Hits" compared to previous periods. Any Awstats guru here? $:-\$

Markham · « **Reply #17 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:31 AM »

No but I rather think mouser is dreading his hosting bill this month!

Do we need to consider getting up some mirrors?
-sgtevmckay (January 29, 2010, 12:24 AM)

mouser · « **Reply #18 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:32 AM »

Let's just keep an eye on traffic continues for next week or so.. and see how it continues.. you can't possibly expect these numbers to keep up day after day.

mouser · « **Reply #19 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:35 AM »

we dont pay more if there is more bandwidth, as long as we stay under our limits.

You (we!) can thank everyone who has donated to DC for the fact that we have a pretty big limit even for our member server.. If not for the last fundraiser we would never be able to afford it.. at the time it seemed pretty excessive for us to be buying such a big secondary member server.. now it looks prescient

but like i said.. let's see how traffic continues.. if somehow you kept up at 60gb a day we would exceed our monthly limit, and then mirrors would be needed.

sgtevmckay · « **Reply #20 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:36 AM »

I have space on my Office live account....I would not have a way to track the DL Numbers, but can track page visits.

I would just offer up the DL Link

Just a consideration.

I will probably re-institute the Donation button at the Wikidot, and see if we get any bites and a bank roll going

Markham · « **Reply #21 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:37 AM »

Do you want me to delay the release of the next version? That will cause another spike!

Mark

mouser · « **Reply #22 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:40 AM »

HELL NO DON'T DELAY IT!!!!

FULL STEAM AHEAD!!!

(but you might want to keep your eye open for a place to put a mirror in case it brings down the member server and you have to temporarily send people to a secondary site)

We've been under-using the member server for a year -- let's push it to the limit.

sgtevmckay · « **Reply #23 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:40 AM »

I also have a DropBox Account, Again no DL Tracking

mouser · « **Reply #24 on:** January 29, 2010, 12:41 AM »

don't host it anywhere without DL tracking.. you need to know how many downloads there are, especially now that we have a mystery on our hands.