During the installation or upgrade of SMF the administrator of the forum will be offered the opportunity to allow Simple Machines to collect basic statistics every month. This page provides more information on the process, how to opt in and out, and what we collect.

Why Gather Statistics?

Here at Simple Machines we always strive to keep improving our software. The provision of some basic statistics allow us to make judgements based on the needs of our current users. Being able to see trends in our installation base will enable us to make decisions on support for legacy server software, and the number of sites using previous versions of our software.

What Do We Collect?

Simple Machines only collects basic data from each opted in installation. This data currently is:

  • Unique Install ID (To enable us to collect stats without identifying your site by name)
  • Time Stats Collected
  • Member Count
  • Topic Count
  • Message Count
  • Board Count
  • Spell Checker Support
  • GD Version
  • Web Server Version
  • PHP Version
  • SMF Version
  • SMF Database Version
  • Database Type (MySQL, Postgresql, SQLite)
  • Database Version

How Do We Protect Your Privacy?

Simple Machines stores all data in a database on a secure server. The tables holding the site addresses are separate to those holding the collected data to make it difficult to cross reference. Only members of the administrative team have access to this database.

How Secure Is The Collection?

Data is only sent to Simple Machines after a hand shaking procedure has taken place. Each month Simple Machines will ping your server to ask for your statistics. The server verifies the request and then sends statistics back to the server in a separate transaction. This helps ensure the whole process is as secure as possible.

How Do You Opt In or Out?

If you wish to enable or disable stat collection simply upload a copy of upgrade.php and upgrade_x-x.sql from your current versions upgrade archive (Available from the download page) and select or deselect the option on upgrade. Alternatively to disable collection using phpMyAdmin run the following query:

Code Select
REPLACE INTO smf_settings (variable, value) VALUES (allow_sm_stats, 0);

SMF 2.0.15 or higher. This setting can now be controlled in Administration > Configuration > Server Settings > General and choosing "Allow Stat Collection".

Want to Verify What is Collected?

As all Simple Machines software is open source simply open the source file and verify it for yourself. Open Sources/Stats.php and investigate the SMStats function.
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