Discussion Forum Birthday – 5 years today
Today it’s the DreamHost Discussion Forum’s 5 years birthday. The first “Test Message” was submitted by “Jeff @ DreamHost” the 18th of April 2001, and has since been followed by more than 40000 messages.
I’ve been digging deep into the archives to come up with the following Birthday Stats:
General stats:
In 5 years the forum have had 43881 posts, in 9703 threads, submitted by 5779 registered users (plus countless of anonymous users).
Posts Per Month
Active Threads Per Month
Active Users Per Month
Most active boards:
| Posts | Threads | Board |
|---|---|---|
| 20641 | 4553 | General Troubleshooting |
| 5439 | 1284 | Beginner’s Forum |
| 4889 | 907 | Curious About DreamHost? |
| 4447 | 1208 | 3rd Party Software & Scripts |
| 4077 | 993 | Programming |
| 1827 | 231 | Offtopic Discussion |
| 1019 | 183 | Web Design |
| 664 | 129 | * Beta Testing * |
| 437 | 124 | E-Commerce |
| 259 | 56 | Multimedia |
| 182 | 36 | Promotion |
Most active users (all-time):
| Posts | Username | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1940 | will | DH Pooh-Bah |
| 1556 | ardco | DH Pooh-Bah |
| 1450 | matttail | DH Pooh-Bah |
| 1160 | Anonymous | |
| 900 | scjessey | DH DreamNinja |
| 811 | chrisjj | DH DreamNinja |
| 777 | Jeff @ DreamHost | DH DreamNinja  |
| 758 | Atropos7 | DH DreamNinja |
| 614 | user919 | DH Grizzled Veteran |
| 566 | TorbenGB | DH Grizzled Veteran |
Former DreamHost employee Will Yardley leads the pack with 1940 posts since he joined the forum in May 2001.
Most active users (last year):
| Posts | Username | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1268 | matttail | DH Pooh-Bah |
| 775 | scjessey | DH DreamNinja |
| 602 | ardco | DH Pooh-Bah |
| 446 | Anonymous | |
| 381 | dallas | DreamHost Honcho |
| 358 | chrisjj | DH DreamNinja |
| 335 | Raz2133 | DH Smarty Pants |
| 328 | guice | DH Smarty Pants |
| 290 | bygodaddy | DH Enthusiast |
| 287 | Atropos7 | DH DreamNinja |
College student “matttail” (known for his always helpful replies) has written an impressive 1268 posts in the last 12 months, almost the same as Simon Jessey (known for his work with the wiki) and Bob (known for his cryptic signature) together.
Most active threads:
| Posts | Thread | Started by | Started on |
|---|---|---|---|
| 322 | DreamHost Word Association | wjd | 05/21/05 |
| 123 | Everything slow? | feldmahler | 02/21/06 |
| 76 | Policy on affiliate links…? | Jeff @ DreamHost | 04/05/05 |
| 75 | Server Slow? | schweb | 01/05/05 |
| 65 | Domain Hijackers ? | Father Luke | 03/25/05 |
| 65 | Favorite Browsers 2005ed | sierko | 03/18/05 |
| 59 | Downtime announcement? | annadorfman | 03/29/04 |
| 57 | Ridiculous | warfield | 08/23/05 |
| 57 | wiki.dreamhost.com! | Josh | 03/22/05 |
| 57 | What Would You Like to See DH Add In The Future? | wjd | 10/12/03 |
| 55 | So, no backup power supply at DH??? | chrisjj | 09/13/05 |
| 53 | Major email problem | jon_potter | 01/21/03 |
| 53 | Cannot send mail | sdesigns | 07/03/05 |
| 52 | Replacement for FrontPage | theMezz | 05/22/05 |
| 51 | New e-mail address control panel? | PatrickD | 08/15/04 |
| 48 | anyone have problems with DB? | limicell | 04/15/05 |
| 48 | PHP5 | guice | 03/12/05 |
| 46 | Support que 552, now 335 | IAmAtMyWitsEnd | 03/17/05 |
| 44 | MySql down again! grrrrrr | archon810 | 04/21/05 |
| 43 | Vote for Ruby on Rails | bluecrab | 03/14/05 |
Lesson learned: A great fairy tale should involve a disaster, a controversy and a troll + fun, hope and love!
Anyway, Happy Birthday DreamHost Discussion Forum! I will now prepare my birthday surprice and get ready for the party! Hope to see you all in the forum soon.
April 18th, 2006 at 14:23
What a great bit of number crunching! I really enjoyed reading it, and I shall now have to add this blog to my feed aggregator.
April 19th, 2006 at 08:45
This is awesome! Sorry I’m a day late, but it was still good reading. Thanks for taking the time to pull togeather all this information.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:32
Happy you liked the stats. Any more charts you like to see now that I have all the data available?
April 19th, 2006 at 12:35
If you can be bothered, how about doing a cut-down version of this on a monthly basis, or something like that?
April 26th, 2006 at 19:36
Thanks for the kind words and noticing!
The forum started as a bit of a project of mine, and – judging by your charts – has become incredibly popular since it was started so long ago. Suffice to say my own activity has dropped (there’s just too much to keep up with), but I look forward to seeing the forum grow and prosper. :>