HISTORY, HONORS, RECOGNITIONS & RECORDS

• 2006 March 13. For unknown reasons, the site received the second highest volume of single-day hits in its history: 742,460 hits, constituting 2.81 GB of data transfer. The majority of this was traffic to AumHa Forums, though the non-forum parts of the site also received a spike in daily traffic.
• 2004 November 26. For the fourth time in the same month, a new all-time single-day hit record was set November 26 that isn’t likely to be broken anytime soon. Due to a front page article in the Los Angeles Times today — Breaking, Entering Your PC by Terry McDermott — the site received 842,615 hits, or 3.73 GB of data transfer in a single day.
• 2004 November 3. A new all-time single-day hit record was set November 1 with 271,100 hits, then exceeded on November 2 with 271,910 hits and on November 3 with 322,581 hits. The prior record — which came from getting ’Gnomed — held for over two and a half years, since 14 February 2002. In early November PC World’s “More Spyware Prevention & Removal” series by Steve Bass highlighted my page The Parasite Fight and was featured news on MSN.
• 2004 September. Beginning September 8, this site was once again listed as Featured Community on Microsoft’s Expert Zone Communities page.
• 2004 June. Continuing May’s trend traffic just kept climbing! This month was historic for the site, because I expanded it to two separate hosting accounts, one devoted to the Forum and the other to everything else. It was a new record high traffic month of 5,847,609 hits for the month (an average of 208,843 hits per day) and 34.15 GB of data transfer.
• 2004 May. This month went off the map! Primarily due to AumHa Forums being fully back on this server, traffic to this site overflowed all previous boundaries (and our monthly bandwidth allowances) with a new record high traffic month of 4,846,399 hits for the month (an average of 156,335 hits per day) and 31.83 GB of data transfer (an average of 1.03 GB per day).
• 2004 April 6. I restored the AumHa Forums to this same server after eight months on a different server. The amount of traffic generated by the forums is reflected in the record high traffic month of 3,342,884 hits.
• 2004 January. Microsoft featured Alex Nichol’s article on Virtual Memory in Windows XP on the Expert Zone Communities page of its eXpert Zone site. Hits rapidly flowed to the site, with 613,240 hits in its first five days, and Alex’s article became the most-visited page on this site. This also led to the busiest month in the history of the site with 3,107,762 hits (not counting the AumHa Forum).

• 2003
  August. Windows XP: The Official Magazine put us back in the limelight with their current issue’s highlight of my Planning Your Partitions article, remarking, “If you’re adding a new hard drive or you want to divide your hard drive up into various different drives, that means creating partitions for each drive letter you want... This is a clear and simple guide to working with partitions, explaining what you can do with them, why you’d want to and how to go about it.” August 1. After a year and a half of hosting AumHa Forums on this site, I had to move them due to occasional massive bandwidth consumption. Thanks to my friend Felix Kasza, there was no trouble finding a new server — but it did mean that statistics for the voluminous hits to the forum were no longer showing on my overall site stats; so, beginning with August 2003, the numbers go down significantly. August 24. Fred Langa’s Langa List newsletter printed mention of my Do You Have Parasites? page. The three days following brought 374,446 hits, and the Parasites page became the fourth most-visited page on the site.

• 2002
  
  2002 October 24. Lockergnome honored us again with, and with enormously complimentary words. Under the topic of “What sites keep me connected throughout the day?”, Chris Pirillo wrote of us, “If you’ve got a beef with Windows and need answers that the Microsoft site is too obtuse to provide, then visit this site. Once here, you’ll find registry patches, driver updates, and the all-important Windows FAQs. Fiddle around with Windows’ more advanced settings only if you feel comfortable with them. This is a great site that all Windows users should know about.” We had a nice one-day spike in hits. Thanks, Chris!
• 2002 October 20. London’s Sunday Times (print edition only), ‘Culture – Doors’ Internet Q&A section, recommended my little-read page Knowledge Base Links: Windows Protection Errors page as a “comprehensive roundup of the issues” on understanding Windows error messages. For a single day, site visitation lept by 6,000-7,000 hits, compared to the 400-500 additional daily visitors the last time the Times mentioned us 19 months ago (back on our older, less reliable web hosting).
• 2002 September 29. The lowest number of hits of the entire year to date — 41,265 hits — because a 24-hour DNS problem kept most of the world from finding the site for most of the day.
• 2002 September 23. Fred Langa’s Langa List newsletter recommended my Windows Shutdown Troubleshooter, generating 156,021 hits the same day.
• 2002 September. In the press, the November issue of Windows XP: The Official Magazine (on sale in September) favorably reviewed my Windows PowerToys FAQ, designating us “one of our favourite Windows XP sites” (as one might suspect from the several months of favorable attention they’ve given us).
• 2002 August 5. Fred Langa’s Langa List newsletter paid homage to Alex Nichol’s article on Burning CDs in Windows XP. On the same day, 180,005 hits were received on the site (the second highest day ever — and 144,549 hits on the day after), and Alex’s article lept up to be the second most visited page on the site.
• 2002 July 16. After several days of site traffic nearing 1 gigabyte per day, I set our Apache-on-Unix web server to gzip all files on the site. This compressed all page files as much as two-thirds, causing daily traffic figures to plummet hereafter, and also delivering larger pages distinctly faster on slower Internet connections. (The first day, though hits increased 11%, bytes transferred was reduced 63%!)
• 2002 July. In the press, Windows XP: The Official Magazine featured the KB Links: Startup & Bootlog page.
• 2002 June. Though you can’t find it online, the July issue (No. 7) of England’s Windows XP: The Official Magazine featured this site on page 91 This may account for some of the surge of visitation in early June, as it went on sale. The reviewer gave particular attention to Alex Nichol’s Windows Product Activation FAQ, our forums, newsletter, and the ease of finding information.
• 2002 May. On 6 May, pair Networks Insider, the monthly newsletter of our web host, pair.com, selected this site as one of its three “Featured Sites.” Also, the May issue of Personal Computer World magazine, page 157, listed the Windows XP Shutdown Troubleshooter page.
• 2002 April 4. I launched online support and discussion forums. These got off to a great start, almost doubling the number of hits in the second day (and propelling the bandwidth usage through the roof — time to do a bit of compression on the forum files!).
• 2002 March. On 2 March, Scot’s Newletter again named this site as Link of the Week, specifically praising Alex Nichol’s Windows Product Activation FAQ. “Alex’s piece... demystifies several aspects of the Microsoft anti-piracy technology,” Scot Finnie wrote. “This is a must-read...” On 3 March, Washington Post columnist Doug Boulter included the Win XP Shutdown & Restart Troubleshooting page and Gary Woodruff’s Upgrading to Win XP article in his list of “the best tech support available.” On 11 March, Fred Langa’s LangaList (Plus! Edition) favorably mentioned us, and hits jumped 30,000 or so to 114,195 the next day.
• 2002 February 18. TechTV’s television show, “The Screen Savers” named us to its list of five Best Windows Tweak & Tip Sites. “Here’s a collection of links,” they wrote, “to end all collections of Windows support links. It’s organized, complete, and most of all, helpful.” No new records were set, but we got 468,972 hits over three days (almost double the daily average). This was actually a “double nod” from a familiar source, since the TechTV columnist was... Mr. Chris Pirillo.
• 2002 February 14. We got ’Gnomed again! Lockergnome newsletter, under “GnomeFAVORITE,” gave us a very nice Valentine’s Day card by saying some wonderful things about this site. A new single-day record was set: 247,668 hits, more than double the old record from 9 Dec 2001.
• 2002 January 31. Scot Finnie was the earliest eminent tech writer to honor this site, way back in 1999. He did so again in the 31 January issue of Scot’s Newletter: “...Windows Support Center should be among every Windows user’s Top 10 links for resources to turn to when you get into a problem on your PC,” he wrote. “If ever there was an SFNL Link of the Week, it’s The Windows Support Center.” The day following, we received 106,905 hits, about double the daily average and nearly tying the all-time record.

• Late 2001
  Late August. Migrated the site to a new web host, pair.com. (Special thanks to MS-MVP Felix Kasza.) From that moment, reliable, high-quality delivery of this site to the public began! October 25. The day Windows XP launched, we set a new all-time single-day trafficrecord, over 61,000 hits. Between August and October, site traffic doubled, apparently due to a combination of Windows XP’s release and the superior quality of my new web host. November. Microsoft added this site to its list of Windows XP Related Communities on its eXpert Zone site. In December, we were promoted to eXpert Zone “Featured Site,” an honor that lasted for six months, through May 2002. December. My Memory Management article suddenly became a hit among “Shadows of Luclin” gamers. One game board posted this link and, within a day, over a dozen boards were carrying it in several dozen chat threads. The first day, 7 December, broke the all-time one-day hit record, with 63,879 hits. The second day nearly doubled this with a then-mind-boggling 110,431 hits, then kept rising to 116,174 hits on 9 December.

• Early 2001
  January 28. Fred Langa’s LangaList newsletter carried a complimentary reference to this site. In the 24 hours following, there were 50,371 hits, a new single-day hit record. March 11. London Sunday Times, “Your Guide to the Internet” supplement, both print and online editions, recommended this site. There were 400-500 additional visitors each day for the week following. April 11. PC World, “Keep Your PC Purring” column by Steve Bass. On the same day, a TechTV article on Windows shutdown issues, by David Prager, referred readers to this site. May. My Windows Shutdown article was the “Featured FAQ” of The NakedPC newsletter.

• 2000
  
  Spring: Changed web hosts, moving to Freespeech.org. (I suspect it was in April.) You can still find the page there if you know where to look, since I’ve never been able to get them to take it down! Please notice that nobody in the Internet or print-press worlds showed any interest in this site during the year 2000. December: I registered the domain aumha.org and began paying for hosting, initially on Domain Zero (later absorbed by eHost, which eventually raised the prices in exchange for poorer service, less reliability, and lousier features).

• 1999
  
  July: I have no idea on which day in July 1999 this site went live, nor how many hits were received the first day. I do recall that it was no more than a few dozen, and that I was thrilled when it eventually broke 100. My first web hosting was on Xoom.com. MS-MVP Ron Badour had encouraged me to start a web page to post my résumé online, and I thought I’d add a few other things while I was at it. MVPs Ron Badour, Lee Chapell, and Sky King all provided a lot of help and encouragement getting this site off the ground. August 11: “Link of the Week” Windows Magazine’s Win98 Insider by Scot Finnie, for the original Windows Shutdown Troubleshooting article and its Win98 SE companion. September 3: Lockergnome newsletter, “GnomeSYSTEM,” for my Registry Patches page. I was ecstatic to see over a thousand hits in a single day for the new site. (There surely would have been many more if I’d had decent hosting at the time. I now get that many hits every 15-20 minutes.)