On Dec 21, we had a guest explosion over 200 people popped in...all going to the same thread (Huckabee" in the "Politics" forum) ...I asked around the software's forum if there was a way to find out where it was coming from...They said there wasn't and to ask the host server to find out where the traffic was coming from...

I decided to wait instead and see if Google Analytics could tell us anything after they updated their statistics...It's a site where I can view reports about our traffic...

It did...

The guest explosion came from StumbleUpon...185 visits directly from them, which means the others were probably another link from that added on top...

StumbleUpon is one of the many sites in the "social bookmarking" link at the bottom right of each post...It looks like someone linked it to SU and the floodgates opened...

So not only do we know WHAT happened, but HOW we can try and repeat it...

I just "stumbled" two stories...On top of that, I bookmarked them to del.icio.us, digg, Mister Wong, Netscape, reddit, Slashdot, Squidoo, Technorati, and Yahoo My Web...

That's why we have 37 guests at 5:20AM on a Sunday morning...

If we continue to bookmark...especially during weekdays when internet traffic is much higher, we can keep getting the word out about us...

So start bookmarking!...It looks like it can help more than we thought...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

I had no idea what that button did so I never used it. So I guess the idea is that when someone writes an unusually good post.....put it out there to draw attention. At the same time don't send out the garbage that all sites are full of or we will get a bad reputation and defeat the purpose.
I would encourage everyone to go back and find some of their faves and PUT THEM OUT.

I could get famous. So could you.

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"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively and without self delusion---In the long run these are the only people that count."Robert Heinlein

It also has an underlying purpose...

Besides the short-term effect of people at these bookmarking sites coming in to check us out, our NAME ends up out there on another page of the internet...

That's another page for search engines to pick up, which increases the chances of more people seeing our site later on in life when they go looking for a topic...

It's like a snowball gaining volume on the way down a hill...Since we're young, our name isn't out there...yet...

We're very new, but the more content we put on the site (and the more bookmarking we do), the more people will realize we even exist...And that's when the growth of the forum comes into play...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

Congrats

Temporarily (maybe permanant depends on what happens), the "Social Bookmark this Page" link has been removed from all of the posts...

This is because the site it links to when clicked is down. That's why things were running slow last night and early today. The software was sitting there trying to connect to a web address that couldn't connect. I removed the code...voila!...Things are back to normal (except, obviously, no link to the socializing website)...

If/when it comes back up, I'll return the code...

...and then hope the members make extensive use of it...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

I've returned the code for social bookmarking...Their site is back up...

I've already used it and everything went smooth, so we shouldn't have any issues (I guess until they go down again)...

Please use this tool as much as possible...It gets the Political Wrinkles name out in that great, big internet world...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd