My VATSIM stats website is now live

[marcus holmes]

VATSIM Stats website is now live ( www.vatsimstats.net ) . After many months of late nights and a lot of head scratching my website is finally finished. I had always wanted to see a website that shows the top airport, airlines and aircraft types used on VATSIM.

The Germany VATSIM website used to have a very basic updated weekly table of top airports but this unfortunately disappeared a couple of years ago. I decided last year that I want to create something similar but a lot better, not only having airport, but also airlines and aircraft types, with a searchable function.

I had no previous programming experience so I had to learn programming language Python, CSS, PHP and Javascript from scratch to create and build the website, hence the reason it took so long to put together. A lot of it was learning as I want along. But I am so happy that the website is finally created and available for everyone to enjoy.

In a nutshell the website shows the top 100 most popular airports, top 75 most popular airlines and top 25 aircraft types used on VATSIM, the data was first gathered at the start of the year – 3^rd Jan 2021, and the site updates every 24hrs. There is also a search function on the website, so if you do not see your favourite airport or airline on the website tables you can just search for it to see what position they are in whole grand scheme of things.

There are still some small issues with website responsiveness on some screen sizes, I will be working on that over the next few months. The site is ideally viewed on a desktop monitor, but works fine on most mobiles and tablets.

 I have always wanted to see a website like this for VATSIM, and I am sure there are many other that felt the same, so please go over to my website, and I hope you like it and of course enjoy using it too. 

VATSIM Stats  - http://www.vatsimstats.net 

Edited May 7, 2021 at 11:58 AM by marcus holmes

[Gunnar Lindahl]

At first glance, this looks excellent and is exactly the kind of user-driven enhacenement the community needs. Well done Marcus - I have bookmarked.

[Maius Wong]

Excellent work, Marcus!

[Chriss Klosowski]

Fantastic tool!

[Andreas Fuchs]

Could VATSIM's IT-team explore the possibility to cooperate with Marcus and take the URL on board? Maybe make the URL available at VATSIM's own stats website?

[Alexandra Robison]

This is very cool! Gives me some ideas... 🙂

[Matthew Cianfarani]

[Mod removed]

Anyway - On to a more productive topic... @marcus holmes - Great work!!

 

Edited May 10, 2021 at 10:34 AM by Nestor Perez
Removed deleted quote

[Joshua Jenkins]

[Mod removed]

 

Anyways Marcus, fantastic tool! If I could throw a suggestion at you: It would be cool to see a feature where one could see the top airports/airlines/aircraft from each previous 24 hour period or maybe from each previous week period in addition to since the beginning of the year.

Edited May 10, 2021 at 10:34 AM by Nestor Perez
Removed reference to deleted posts

[Carlos Barranco]

Marcus,

The webpage is GREAT! Specially taking into consideration that you have done it without previous programming experience. Congratulations!

I hope that you don't mind me giving you a suggestion to improve it a little bit. It's a minor detail without relevance. I've noticed that the VATSIM logo at the top right takes visitors to this Forum when they click it. I personally think that it should be better if, by doing so, visitors would be redirected to the VATSIM Homepage (https://www.vatsim.net/). It should be as easy as changing one word at the HTML tag. Anyways, it is already bookmarked in my web browser.

 

On 5/9/2021 at 11:21 AM, Andreas Fuchs said:

Could VATSIM's IT-team explore the possibility to cooperate with Marcus and take the URL on board? Maybe make the URL available at VATSIM's own stats website?

Personally, in addition to what you've said, I would allow Marcus' page to have a URL under the VATSIM.net domain, just like SimAware (map.vatsim.net), and list it at VATSIM's Homepage as well. However, I believe that giving an external page a "VATSIM.net"-type URL is a decision that can only be taken by the Founders... the Code of Regulations, article 4.07b, states that the VATSIM.net domain name belongs to the Founders... anyone is entitled to correct me if my speculation is fully or partially incorrect.

[marcus holmes]

Many thanks for everyone`s kind words, especially from two VATSIM board of governors, I am really happy that I could contribute in my own way to the VATSIM community after being a member for such a long time. 

19 hours ago, Josh Jenk said:

Anyways Marcus, fantastic tool! If I could throw a suggestion at you: It would be cool to see a feature where one could see the top airports/airlines/aircraft from each previous 24 hour period or maybe from each previous week period in addition to since the beginning of the year.

Josh it is possible to do that, but I do not see the point in being able to look at previous 24hrs, as over time there really is very little change at the top of the tables. The same airlines, airports and aircraft types will always be dominate, of course dependent of 3rd part add-ons. The idea of being allowed to see the previous weeks is something that could be implemented in the future at some point.

6 hours ago, Carlos Barranco said:

Marcus,

The webpage is GREAT! Specially taking into consideration that you have done it without previous programming experience. Congratulations!

I hope that you don't mind me giving you a suggestion to improve it a little bit. It's a minor detail without relevance. I've noticed that the VATSIM logo at the top right takes visitors to this Forum when they click it. I personally think that it should be better if, by doing so, visitors would be redirected to the VATSIM Homepage (https://www.vatsim.net/). It should be as easy as changing one word at the HTML tag. Anyways, it is already bookmarked in my web browser.

Carlos I do see what you saying. The reason I have the VATSIM logo pointing to the VATSIM forum homepage is because I believe a lot of new members are not even aware that the forum page exists. I see a lot of new members asking questions on a number of social platforms, questions that have been answered here in the forums many time. 

[Carlos Barranco]

18 hours ago, marcus holmes said:

The reason I have the VATSIM logo pointing to the VATSIM forum homepage is because I believe a lot of new members are not even aware that the forum page exists. I see a lot of new members asking questions on a number of social platforms, questions that have been answered here in the forums many time. 

Understood, then you can disregard my suggestion.

 

And yes, you could be doing well by pointing to the forum, seen from your perspective. I also believe that 99.9% of people are not aware of the existence of forums, so they simply pop out the questions in social media, as it is faster and easier to do so. Won't be the first time I read a Facebook post from a newbie that has just signed up at VATSIM asking "I am trying to connect, but it says that my password is incorrect"... it is clearly stated and pinned at this forum that the New Member Orientation course must be completed before.

Edited May 11, 2021 at 04:52 PM by Carlos Barranco

[Alistair Thomson]

@Carlos Barranco LOVE your logo! I'm old enough to have programmed a computer with core memory! (At least, I assume that is a core with the x, y and sense lines...)

The machine was a Univac 1108 and its main memory was magnetic core, which I programmed in 1969. The Fortran compiler took up a whopping 47K of memory. My smartphone today is many times more powerful.

Times change. Thank you for the memory! :)

[Carlos Barranco]

8 minutes ago, Alistair Thomson said:

@Carlos Barranco LOVE your logo!

Thanks! But it's not my logo, though 🤣 It's the badge of the Spanish IT Engineers...

EDIT: And yes, the badge represents the core memory of the old days...

Edited May 11, 2021 at 05:25 PM by Carlos Barranco

[Charan Kumar]

Awesome, love it