# Using Discourse for a short while, majorly impressed!
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898
**Category:** Praise
**Created:** [May 19, 2018, 7:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898 "2018-05-19T19:17:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@JanJoost](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JanJoost)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2018, 7:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/1 "2018-05-19T19:17:35Z")
This may (probably is) not the best place to say this - but thank you!
I’ve only been using Discourse for a short while now, but am majorly impressed! Not just with the software (a forum with 1000 members of which between 50 and 100 are online at any given time - 70K+ daily views and NO HEADACHES for me!), but also with the opennes of the community and the speed of development.
So again: Thank you!
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### Author:  [@arianit](https://meta.discourse.org/u/arianit)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2018, 8:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/2 "2018-05-19T20:07:33Z")
😉 great to see such comments
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### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2018, 8:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/3 "2018-05-21T08:35:19Z")
> [@JanJoost](#):
>
> This may (probably is) not the best place to say this - but thank you!
On the contrary sir, it is the _perfect_ place to say this 😉
> [@JanJoost](#):
>
> a forum with 1000 members of which between 50 and 100 are online at any given time
Is it public? You’re welcome to share a URL.
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### Author:  [@JanJoost](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JanJoost)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2018, 9:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/4 "2018-05-21T09:20:23Z")
> [@erlend\_sh](#):
>
> Is it public? You’re welcome to share a URL.
It’s www.forumfeminarum.nl - it’s a Dutch forum for women.
Some interesting tidbits:
- Currently 1100+ accounts, with a very lively community (at least, I think so 😉 )
- It’s 11:00 on a lovely Monday morning (Dutch national holiday today, so most have the day off), and around 100 logged-in users online right now
- Maximum number of visitors: During the Royal Wedding last Saturday, 140+ users online
- We started setting everything up on May 1
- Started with 2GB RAM and 2 CPU cores, but increased it to 4 GB RAM and 4 CPU cores. Which is much more than we need.
- Big hit: the ‘Babble’ plugin. Especially during royal weddings 😉
Attached two screenshots of the statistics page and one screenshot of the output of ‘top’. Please note that top fluctuates between a load of 0.65 and 1.20 at the moment, with an average of around 0.95.
Ninja-edit: The load was considerably higher during the Royal Wedding due to the many posts (many writes). Load averaged around 2 - 2.5 then.
If you’d like to know more, please let me know - I am happy to share!
  
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### Author:  [@BlackKnob](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BlackKnob)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2018, 6:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/5 "2018-05-21T18:25:37Z")
> [@JanJoost](#):
>
> We started setting everything up on May 1
how did you get so many members in 3 weeks? It’s impressive.
Did you advertise?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2018, 12:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/6 "2018-05-22T00:20:37Z")
6 posts were split to a new topic: [Support configuring hamburger selector](https://meta.discourse.org/t/support-configuring-hamburger-selector/88080)
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### Author:  [@JanJoost](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JanJoost)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2018, 6:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/7 "2018-05-21T18:35:59Z")
> [@BlackKnob](#):
>
> how did you get so many members in 3 weeks? It’s impressive.
> Did you advertise?
Ah yes, fair question, and one I should have answered in my previous post. We set it up because another forum announced they were going to close (and they gave only two weeks notice). So the user base already existed and this is more of a migration.
Must be said though that this wasn’t the only initiative and there is one other forum active as well. That’s based on a different technology (PHPBB) and needless to say, I am a bit biased as to which one is better.
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### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2018, 8:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/8 "2018-05-22T08:08:34Z")
How are you paying the server bills?
Interest based communities can be very hard to keep afloat in the long term, which is why a lot of them end up on platforms like Facebook Groups or Slack even if they would have liked to have better knowledge storage and the like.
If you haven’t secured long term sustainability yet I highly recommend looking into our Patreon integration:
> **[Partnerships and App Integrations — Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/apps)**
>
> Enhance your creator tools with Patreon's seamless integrations and expand your reach with trusted partners.
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### Author:  [@JanJoost](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JanJoost)
#### Post date: [May 22, 2018, 1:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-for-a-short-while-majorly-impressed/87898/9 "2018-05-22T13:38:21Z")
For now I’m hosting it on one of my own boxes (I’ve got a few boxes in a few data centres - used to be hosting geek). So it’s basically putting the spare capacity to good use. But the Patreon integration does look good! Thanks for the pointer!