This week I have been working with Chip's hosting company and his domain registrar to get those accounts transferred over to Mrs. Pearson's control so she can get the site back up and running. I think we're almost there. So if you've tried his site and haven't gotten in, please keep trying. Hopefully we'll get it back online in the coming days.
Ah so you're the "other mystery caller" who the hosting company wouldn't identify! I was getting worried that someone was going to try for financial benefit by resurrecting the website as a business (especially given the timing of the domain expiring in a couple weeks.)
THIS IS FANTASTIC NEWS and I thank you for your time and effort in this. I think we all agree that it's imperative that the site live on as Chip's legacy, and to help millions more. (I will try to contact you privately about some specific matters.)
... I told them that Chip had helped hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people all over the globe. While they knew Chip was a Microsoft Excel MVP, I don't think they had a real appreciation for just what a titan Chip was in the Excel world; which is why Mrs. Pearson had Chip's website taken down after his death.
I think you're going to have to call Mr. & Mrs. Pearson back and let them know your estimate was off.
I spent hours on various archived versions of the site from a number of sources, consolidating facts and stats, mostly from Chip's own notes that he would tally up every couple years. It appears that he gave up trying to keep track of site traffic since it was consuming time he could spend answering emails and phone calls. His last count was almost 5 years ago but I found a pretty solid data source so I could estimate the usage since then . Even as "VBA usage as a whole" has decreased in the last number of years, cpearson.com site visitor counts were *never* lower than the previous years; always a increase.
So I think this figure would have been a surprise even to him. In the last few years cpearson.com the average
day for the site consisted of
50,000 unique visitors reading 80,000 pages.
All things considered (and estimating on the low side) the
total traffic since the site was registered in 1999 was:
- 163,300,000 site visits
- 287,280,000 page loads
Chip was averaging
1 site visitor every 1.7 seconds.
Half a million zip files were downloaded per year.
That's a
lot of traffic - especially considering the site consists of
only 500 pages and
300 downloadable files... that shows just how valuable the site "golden content" really is.
I'm slapped together some charts. (I'm a little embarrassed with the quality of of them considering the topic, but I wanted to get this posted ASAP!)
Daily Chart All-time Chart
Although Chip had originally set out with the purpose of teaching himself PowerPoint, he quickly realized the satisfaction that can be achieved from helping others. In a post from 1999, Chip discussed his excitement at having reached 100 daily visitors, saying "I feel like the king of the world!"
Years later he had to set some boundaries for people emailing him with questions, because he was receiving
thousands of emails per day and
opening every single one. He set out some basic rules,
"use spell check, be specific, poor writing is a pet peeve, and don't attach files" (since that extra time in opening attachments would reduce the number of people he could respond to in a day). Yet even when putting his foot down he was still apologetic for not replying to everyone personally.
Chip's words:
Chip Pearson said:
...include it any any applications that you create, including commercial works and works for hire. This distribution is royalty-free and may be done without any license from me. I would appreciate a reference to my page in the source code and in any printed documentation.
This attribution, however, is optional. Do what you feel is the right thing to do.
It sounds like we have a chance to get the site back up and running, and we're going to have to work together to make that happen. That act of binding together will in itself will be an amazing legacy for "King" Chip Pearson to leave us.
Bill and I had already contacted his hosting company and made sure they knew the score, so there was never any danger of his hosting company reactivating the site without the Pearson family's consent. The real threat was some internet carpetbagger buying the domain and using Chip's hard work for their own gain. While its expiry was more than a couple of weeks out, it was a concern we needed to address. I am pleased to state that I have seen to it that Mr. & Mrs. Pearson now have control of Chip's account with his domain registrar and thus this threat has been neutralized.
