WOW looks like CPF has lost a

Traffic there may be down, but when you are on the site there is typically about 300-600 people currently online there.

So traffic at CPF is still higher than BLF by what, about a factor of 20? As I write this there are 612 folks viewing at CPF and19 here at BLF. Personally, I like it here a lot better, but then I like cheap lights!

True but since BLF has only been around for a little over a year--BLF is doing pretty darn good IMO. Give BLF time and there will be more traffic and people here at any given time compared to the other place.

What is strange is that 20% of the 600 are members and the rest are visitors. Or are a lot of members not signing on?

I bet people are afraid to sign up over there because they are afraid of how they will be treated. People sign up here quicker because of the awesome information, great atmosphere and all the nice members (there are a handful of buttheads here too--we know and you know who you are Tongue out) and how people are treated here.

I think people don't like to log in over at CPF because of the huge scary red message they get until they have 3 authorized posts (only in subforums that count).

It's sort of interesting that BLF deals with a retail market that most people do not even know exists: cheap, bright Chinese flashlights.

A rather specialized marketplace, but pretty fascinating. I had never met anyone who had a collection of Chinese-built flashlights until I visited this place.

I didn't have a collection of Chinese built flashlights (to speak of) until I visited this place.

whenwillitendFoy

sorrybutitwillneverendFoy Money mouth

ShortlyaftertheChineserevoltbankruptingusallFoy :P

As Foy said in a recent review, "The Chinese are coming". And they have filled my shelf with some pretty nice flashlights.

Chinese products: Can't live with them... Can't live without them...

i wonder that too. how far has CPF lost its traffic? it seems soo quite there.

Just wanted to chime in with an observation here. I've followed CPF's traffic levels for many years now, and I've seen a real change in the numbers of 'active members' the site has since they came back online after the server crash. It's been over a month since things restarted there and they are getting about 7150 active members per month. While this is down a bit from what it had been historically (more like 9000), it doesn't tell the real story.

Don't know about this site, but I manually approve all registrations to FNF, so I see every spam registration. We're seeing about 5 spammers a day try to register to the site. FF.com, on the other hand, has had over 500 spam registrations over the same period (about 40 a day.) Because of CPF's long history and size, my best guess is that they get at least that many per day. Because of the way they handle spam accounts, these 'members' probably show in their 'active' list...meaning that 7150 figure is probably inflated by 1500 or more.

Now I admit I'm not privy to how the forum software at CPF calculates 'active members', so this is mostly conjecture on my part, but it would be consistent with what you guys are seeing as far as posting activity goes. Looks to me like they really took a hit over the down time and lost posts (and the growth of BLF, as well!)

All I do know for a fact is that we are now at a point with the flashlight enthusiast community where if the ownership of CPF closed things down, the hobby would still have several sites to carry on the fight. And that makes me a very, very happy boy .

Hi there Nightcrawler. I think you're probably right with your assessment of CPF's membership. Actually our member count here is somewhat inflated too, because we have blocked spammers as well. I don't know why the forum software counts blocked users in the member count. We went through a few months of bigtime SPAM registrations, followed by a lull in the storm. I hope it stays that way.

Don't feel badly about the inflated member counts, as I know it's really a function of the type of forum software being used by each site. For FNF, the numbers at the bottom the home page are 'real members' (mostly -- doesn't account for members that registered but never logged in. I purge those once a year or so.) If you go to our 'Stats' page, the number shown for each month's registrations includes the spammers that try to get in but I reject. Someday I'll dig into the forum software and fix that, I think.

In any case, what we both see in our site's numbers is far different than CPF. They ban each spam registration, as opposed to rejecting them. This vastly inflates the number of 'members' the site shows in its home page stat count. They show somewhere over 120,000 members, but even the owner there admits the real number is significantly less than that. I'd guess that as much as 25% of that number is spammers...maybe more.

Regardless, both BLF and FNF are now healthy forums. You guys have grown more than we have, but its not a competition, as far as I'm concerned. It's more about making sure the hobby thrives and flashlight addicts have someplace to hang out and talk about lights. Strength in numbers, right?

BTW...don't be a stranger! (Although I know how much time an Admin can spend on a site, it can be a lot!)

Ah, I got you now. That's a weird policy.

Thanks again Nightcrawler for the warm welcome and help you gave me on FNF a little over a year ago, that really helped us get off the ground here.

Glad to have been of help. We can't slay the dragon unless we work together, right?

Not to take this thread too far off-topic, but I wonder if she dislikes you as much as she dislikes me?

In any case, there's not much higher praise than being on the serving wench's $hit list.

If you are like me, I got tired of the snarky attitude of the place and it seemed the site was down more than up when I went there. I like this place better.

Hi nightcrawler, I tried registering for your forums a while back but had problems authenticating, so I gave up.

Sorry to hear that you had registration issues, hazna. If you try to register again I'll make sure you get access to the forum. If you plan on using a different user name than 'hazna', just let me know so I can look for it when I review the registrations.