Is the "anonymous donor who provided free help in giving the site its current, balanced look" a member of the forums or is this asking too much information?

James, perhaps in a future Reelthoughts you could provide us with some website stats? Things like what browser and operating system people use and so on. I don't know about everyone else, but I find these things to be really interesting.

wouldn't you need a poll for that. or can the webmaster know what browser i'm using.
sorry if i come off a noob. don't know anything about the background stuff. about this that is.

Yeah that is a poll question. I don't think anyone can actually see what OS and what browser a visitor uses to see a website.

It's possible, I'm sure.

Occasionally I visit sites which can tell me which OS I'm using, which browser and also my I.P address.

Yeah but it's for your computer. I don't think it's actually stored anywhere.

well, yeah, derek. i did know its possible, and very frequently exercised. but i think i made a mistake. i think i should have been more direct. can a forums webmaster know about all this?
like, does the phpBB thing or something along that lines provide this info to the webmaster.


sorry for the confusion.

Don't apologize aameen, I knew what you were talking about.


And apologizing makes you look weak.

It is certainly possible, but it depends on the web host James is using. Different hosts offer different statistics. Even the basic host for my now defunct free website used to provide some statistics on the visitors like what country they're from.

I don't think the anonymous donor is a member of the forums. He wasn't involved in their creation and, although I gave him the option of signing up during the trial period, he didn't show any interest. I can't say for certain whether he did nor did not sign up later.

Google analytics, which I use for the main site, can divine browser and operating system stats. It can also determine screen resolution (although NOT whether a browser is maximized or not when the site is being read). I can't tell specifics for an individual, but the aggregate numbers are available. At a glance, looks like 45% IE vs. 40% Firefox (everything else rounds out the final 15%); 83% Windows vs. 14% Macintosh. I have a lot of other numbers at my fingertips, so maybe I will do a Reelthoughts about this some time.

Thanks James. I guess 2009 isn't the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" after all.