Curiosity...

[Lyttek]

Anyone have an idea why there's a (seemingly) sudden uptick in new users and traffic here? The "who's online" section seems to get updated with a new record-number-of-users-online with increasing regularity, and the number of newbies asking the same questions seems to be increasing as well.

Fact, or just a twisted perception?

[PWSowner]

I have a feeling there are more "so called hosts" out there sending their end users here for support. There's nothing wrong with end users coming here. That's why the "New User Questions" forum was added a little while ago, but hosts are not supposed to send their customers here as a main source of support.

Any host who does send their customers here first probably knows nothing about running a hosting business and therefore have to have the customers come here for the help.

[Infopro]

Could be. I think it may also be the fact that many people want to run their own servers now. Don't know where to turn except here as it's the software they run.

That new users section should have a sticky with links to webhost talk and others for new users to get the most out of their new servers.
I think this forum is great and I read here daily, but it's not the only place to go for all you need to know.

[adept2003]

I agree with both points... and I think that links to the increasing frequency of the number of users posting questions that already been addressed in other threads several times.

There's already a "read this before you post" sticky, but would be good if the "post new thread" page could have BIG RED LETTERS saying "Search is your friend..." or "have you Google'd it?"

[adept2003]

Actually, looking at the stats, it currently says "Most users ever online was 2480".

In my opinion, this is WAYYYY too high!! I would think that most of the "users" in that figure are guest users... but guest users can't view the forum, so the "most users ever online" must be down to robots/spiders visting forums.cpanel.net, and not actual registered users.

I also noticed that there doesn't appear to be a robots.txt file for the forums. Might help to take some of the load off the forums server if they were to include a robots exclusion list?

[chirpy]

I think it's seasonal - some kind of weird migration pattern, or perhaps over-winter hibernation We seem to have lulls and then it's back to the age old questions which more often than not only need a modicum of effort to answer themselves. Ah well, keeps the post count up

[WEB-PROS]

Yeh,i have seen a few hosts that send people to this forum, its not made for this and just waste peoples time asnwering stupid questions. I run my own support and if ever needed something big i would contact cpanel people myself.

[PWSowner]

That's how it's supposed to be done. We are supposed to provide our customers with support and come here ourselves if we need assistance.