Hm.. page views?

[Greyfox]

The way I've come to understand it is that whenever your unique IP address views a page, it adds to the tally of page views. However, that unique IP cannot log a new page view until another post is made in the thread.

Topic Creator posts topic and views it. Page Views: 1.
Topic Creator refreshes topic. Page Views: 1.
Forumer A views topic. Page Views: 2.
Forumer A replies to topic and views it again. Page Views: 3.
Topic Creator views topic. Page Views: 4.
Forumer B views topic. Page Views: 5.
Forumer B replies to topic and views it again. Page Views: 6.

And so on.

-Grey

[mr_pikachu]

Actually, I recall instances in which I've posted a new topic, navigated back to the main forum, and instantly had two views without any members, guests, or even spiders apparently playing a role. Could that be due to the forum thinking I viewed the thread before it actually acquired the first post, then registering the post and my automatic navigation to it? I'm kind of curious, now that we're on the subject.

[Dragonfree]

The forum updates the thread view counts once an hour to reduce the server load - hence why you can enter and exit a thread and the view count doesn't change. I know this because I run a vBulletin forum too and there's an option for it in the admin CP, with a recommendation to use the once-an-hour setting for larger forums. As for there being two views when you've just created a thread, I'm not sure how that can happen unless two people viewed the thread before you had fully loaded the forum main page and the moment of the thread count updating happened to pass just then, which seems awfully unlikely. o.O

All views, even by the same person many times, are definitely counted; my forum has a hack that keeps track of the individual users who have viewed a thread, and that number is significantly lower than the view count.