Category: Web Development

Hello PHB! Remember the readers’ survey I posted about a week ago as part of the PHB’s 13 million hits festivities? Well, in this post, I’ll be unveiling the results – although I should mention that the survey service used only showed the first 100 responses (for free), so accuracy only goes so far. Also, the “Poptropica population” represented are all PHB readers. Still, let’s take a look. 😀

1) What is your gender?

A pretty straightforward question – and results reveal that it’s pretty even, with slightly more Poptropica-playing (or at least PHB-reading) girls at 59%, and boys at 41%.

2) What is your age?

This one may be more surprising – while Poptropica’s target audience is ages 6 to 15, it seems the PHB’s audience comprises of the older half of that and even beyond. The most popular age group was 12 to 14 at 46% (almost half), followed by 9 to 11 at 35%, and then 15 to 17 at 15%. 4% claimed to be 18 or older, while on the other end of the spectrum, none who were 8 or younger responded.

3) Are you a member on Poptropica?

According to survey results, 50% (half) of you guys are paying members on Poptropica – and a further 14% say you used to be or will be. In contrast, just 36% have never been members and have no intention to be. Good thing the PHB covers member releases in a timely manner! 😛

4) When did you first start following (viewing) the PHB?

There’s a little bit of each in this one – with more recent years getting more votes, the most being 2013 (the year Poptropica got sound) at 25.51%, and 2014 (this year) at 20.41%. Then 2012 (when the Friends feature came along) follows with 19.39%, then 2011 (when Poptropica released their guide book) with 15.31%.

After that, 11.22% say they’ve been following since 2008 (the beginning)! Lastly, 2009 (the year of the PHF & PHC’s beginnings) and 2010 (when membership was introduced) are both tied at 4.08%.

5) What PHB features do you regularly use or browse? (Check all that apply.)

On this question, those who answered could check as many options as they deemed appropriate – and here we see that the news & sneak peeks we show here on the blog are the most popular, at 79%! Island walkthroughs and Cool Stuff pages (cheats, costumes, & more) are tied at 73%.

50% (half) of those polled say they read the PHB magazines (The POPCORN, formerly known as The Poptropican’s 911). Lastly, just 30% regularly use the PHC – our hangout spot for Poptropicans to chat (about anything!), party in Multiverse rooms, and have fun.

6) How often do you play Poptropica?

About once or twice a day and a few times in a week have tied here at 27.55%, while several times a day takes up 20.41% of votes. That’s about 75% (a vast majority) who do log in often; a good sign for Poptropica of course. 😀 In the minority, once every couple of weeks received 10.20% of votes, followed by once a week at 7.4%, then once a month at 3.06%. Finally, once every couple of months and even less than the options listed tied at 2.04%. Not bad!

7) How often do you visit the PHB?

Now for the PHB itself – most (42%) say they visit about once or twice a day, while several times a day and a few times in a week are both tied at 20.41%. Once a week took up only 9.18% of votes, once every couple of weeks even less at 4.08%, and no one voted once a month.

Also on the low side were once every couple of months at 2.04% and even less than the options listed at just 1.02%. All that being said, the PHB is grateful to have so many avid readers! 🙂

8) How likely is it that you would recommend the PHB to a friend or colleague?

This question was apparently “standardized” by the survey service, but colleagues aside, it allowed voters to rate us between 1 (lowest) and 10 (highest). 52% rated us either 9 or 10, 25% picked between 7 or 8, leaving just 23% choosing a 6 or lower. I’m not quite sure what the “net promoter score” means, but it’s 29. All in all, pretty good. 🙂

9) How did you find the PHB?

Not surprisingly, most people (83.84%) found us by searching the web for some form of Poptropica help. 14.14% say they found the PHB through another website, while the remaining 6.06% came here at someone’s recommendation. Well, that’s the breakdown.

10) Leave us any other feedback – complaints, praise, criticisms, thanks, etc.

This was a comment box where people could say whatever they wanted. Lots of responses came through, some anonymous and others signed, but here’s a sample of them:

So basically this is how I learned about the PHB. I was known as the Poptropica Master of my class. Everybody would ask me how I defeated the islands, and I actually had no idea. My cousins were actually the ones who taught me about the game, and beat all the islands for me. I was embarrassed at how I didn’t know what to do, even though I did very much enjoy the popularity, I kinda hated how whenever somebody asked me something about Poptropica, I would just say, “I don’t remember.” So, one day I asked my cousins how they found out about Poptropica. They mostly shrugged, and explained how one of my cousins was struggling in school, and often used the Funbrain website. Then eventually discovered Poptropica, and, well, fell in love. I also asked them, “Well, how did you become so good at it?” Then my oldest cousin smiled, and said, “The Poptropica Help Blog of course.” And when I got home, I decided to check the website out, and discovered how to actually learn to become the Poptropica Master all of my friends thought I was. And now, I’ve beaten almost all of the islands with only The PHB’s help. So you guys are doing a great job! Thanks for helping me out! -Random PHB reader

Many of you talked about how the PHB has helped you with Poptropica, blogging, and even making you the “Poptropica master” among your friends and classmates, which is pretty awesome! 😀

I love the PHB. I recently started following it, but I have been viewing it for much, much longer. I think you have gotten much better over the years and I am going to keep viewing your blog for years to come. Keep up the awesome job! I think you should add more things to the POPcorn magazine and that’s all.

Some things people have asked for include: more costumes, more costume contests, more things added to our fan magazine The POPCORN, a feature for introducing our unique Poptropican characters and writing their backstories, and more. We appreciate the feedback, and we’ll see what we can do! 🙂

If you ask me, this is the best fansite poptropica can have. I love your costume page, but it would be nice if you could update it more often. I found the PHB when I was looking for help on Vampire’s Curse, and have been there ever since. I love the POPCORN, it just blows my mind, every issue is different. In conclusion, this is the best fansite around, and i hope to continue reading it!!! Signed, Quick Fang

Also, someone asked about how the PHB background was made – so here’s the secret. Some time ago, before one of YouTube’s many layout changes, the Poptropica Creators had this image (I call it the “Poptropica bits and pieces”) tiled as the background of their channel.

However, it was pretty dark – so after saving it, I went through the hue changer and adjusted brightness/contrast on an image editor (I used Pixlr, but there are plenty of options out there, such as Photoshop). After several adjustments, I decided a lighter shade worked best with the PHB’s layout. (By the way, if you’d like to use any of these, please credit the PHB!)

This image works because it can be tiled, as in repeated next to each other continuously with no break in the pattern. You can also see it used in the Poptropica Crowd wallpaper and also this older wallpaper, but it’s harder to extract it to have it be able to tile just right.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this insight into your fellow PHB readers/fans – about 100 of them, anyway. Despite that limitation, at least the survey results came with some cool bar graphs with a nice color scheme! 😛 Result-gathering is now over, so thanks to all of you who took the time to answer! 🙂