It still looks a lot like winter up here in Wisconsin. But, spring should be arriving in the next couple of weeks. While there are still a few of you (about 150 a day) making regular stops here I thought I would let you know some statistics for the season. Just so you all know how much good your posts do. Because even though it was fairly quiet, there are a lot of lurkers here. People who come to read but never post.

75% of my visitors to this site are new people. On average they visit about three pages here on the forum during their visit. This past season, from November 1st to today, we have had 27,356 unique visitors. There were 8,479 repeat visitors that came back on an average of 4 times during the season. In total, viewing 93,446 forum pages. 89% of those people come from the U.S. and 6% from Canada, 1% from France, 1% from England. The Canadians didn't amount to as big of percentage but they read about 3x as many pages as the U.S. visitors when they did stop in.

As far as the states, New York state was the winner with almost a thousand more visitors than second place. Then, it is near a three way tie for second with Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

No surprise google was the big winner for bringing in those visitors. But 6,324 new visitors came in direct. That means someone sent them an email, or told them the address and they typed it into their browser. I think that's really great. After that, Yahoo, Bing and Hearth.com were who sent us the most referrals.

A little less than half of you are using Internet Explorer, a comfortable second place is Safari again a near tie, Chrome & Firefox are within 20 visitors of one another. Android had almost 10x as many hits as iPhone. The iPad had twice as many hits as iPhone.

I bought two new servers this year and as soon as spring actually hits, I will be moving the web site onto those new servers and giving a bit of a software upgrade. Nothing should be lost. Most people won't even notice the difference.

Hope you all had a good heating season!

Thanks Jabbott

Thanks for the info! Great job!

Thanks for the update. I have not posted much lately, but that could change now that we plan to burn "used corn" form the turkey barns.

Great stats John. We all thank you, kind sir, for keeping this site up and running.

thanks John, haven't posted much this year but have been checking in.

Thanks for keeping it running John

Good Morning. Thought would chime in again. Good link for the 2012-2013 burning season. (It is not over as live about 100 miles north of Eau Claire and woke up today with about 4 inch snow and -2 to -8 depending on where you look) Anyway liked the statistics. A few thoughts. From what I see there does not seem to be as many "Old Bloggers"--to me that is because they like me have learned over many years how to "Make the Stove Work"--Newbees are in learning curve as was myself years ago.
What have noticed is that the price of corn and pellets (My area $7/50#=$280/Ton and Pellets about $4/40#=$200/ton. Problem faced this year was Propane was much more econominical but still did the Stove bit. (Like the heat better). Also corn in area is not as available from farmers and with the high prices went to storage and took the money up front. Secondly last year was very dry and farmers said they did ot even need to dry the corn!!! Big mistake I thought and also the corn quality was not good as there were large stalks in the corn. (Setting on the combine was set different because of dry season)
Went more for the corn/pellet mix. Used about one 5 gal corn to almost 3/4 full 5 gal pail mix. Worked ok, but the corn/pellets varied all the time and had to readjust the settings (Magnum 3500P). Also the pellets made lot more ash to be cleaned out and in my take the mix did not burn as hot as just he corn previous years. (I attributed this to the amount of air going through the mix instead of just plain corn)
Just picked up another load of corn (Have lots of pellet in garage) and as I usually run the corn through a Fanning Mill--much more stalks--took long time to clean the corn. This batch also looked like different corn variety and the mix now does not burn as good as original batches.
My take is less heat of mix than with straight corn before. (Must temper this as have to assume corn is not of quality level of other years. My guess is that the pellets (used previous years same brand) are not doing as well either.
That is my take on fuel.
On the other hand I notice here on the forum and online Web sites that more and more Manufacturers are dropping off. This may be to the fuel prices or just not of good quality of the "Older Brands". I make that observation on the "Brands" blogged on the forum for advice, etc. Seems everyone got into the stove business in good times and just could not sustain the market fluctuations.
Last and just my observation is that most irritations are with the Auger Motors on most Stoves (Mine also). Would seem that this could have been upgraded on all the Stoves to last longer and would minmize the frustration of changing out the Gearbox. (Small space and big hands make hard to replace). Looks like a place for someone to make a better mousetrap!!
But if you are UP NORT you like the stove heat and perservers.
UP NORT

PS--Hope everyone appreciates the work to put on this forum--I have for many years. Thanks

Thanks for the update John. It's good to know you are alive and kicking and have survived this over long winter. I have been burning wood pellets for several months now and the Countryside just keeps plugging along non-stop except for short shutdowns for cleaning every few days.
It was so hot last summer we broke down and got a new very high efficiency gas furnace and central air conditioner. Started using the furnace last fall. I wanted to see how well the new furnace performed on it's own. I didn't start the Countryside for several months but I missed sitting by a stove. It's about like having a dog. I finally decided to fire it up. There was still pellets in the hopper and I started the stove like it had never been off all summer.
There is lots of good information from past postings that are probably answering many questions.
I'll keep checking in.

Thanks for the information and keeping the site up John, it is appreciated. I tell anyone asking about getting a stove/furnace to check this site out. I tell them that even with high corn prices they should really look at stoves that can burn bio instead of just pellets. I worry that once the market is set with pellets that the price of the pellets will rise and we will be no better off than just running our central heat.

One thing in your stats that you might want to combine is that Bing and Yahoo searches are the same. Yahoo started moving their search to Bing a a couple of years ago. Nothing major just might show a different trend in what people are using for search engines being that Google is getting a lot of well deserved bad press. I don't use it and it wouldn't matter much because I use NoScripts, it blocks most of the crap that Google (and others) use to track your browsing. It's a little tricky to get used to but in my opinion everyone should use it to send a message that we don't need them tracking our every movement just to sell us more crap.

When using NoScripts I can set it to allow Scripts, like I have it set for this site, I want them to know I come here and the related ads are probably something I don't mind seeing and being tracked for. But just because I read a news article let's say about gambling doesn't mean I gamble, or read a story about some crazy love affair doesn't mean I'm looking for one, so I block that when reading from general news groups.