Forum update: Our first birthday!

Can you believe the forum went live exactly one year ago today?!

In just 12 months we have become one of the most active programming forums around - we are now actually busier than the forums of two similarly aged and hyped languages, combined! This is not only testament to the popularity of Elixir and how far it’s come (those other languages are developed/backed by two industry giants), but how welcoming, friendly (and dynamic!) the forum and community is :heart_eyes:

To help us celebrate, AppSignal are giving away FIVE annual packages of their 3M plan (worth €39/$49 a month) …just in time for their official AppSignal for Elixir launch :003:

For a chance to win, all you need to do is one of the following:

  • Tweet about AppSignal with the #AppSignalElixir hashtag - whoever gets the most likes, wins!
  • Tweet about AppSignal with the #AppSignalElixir hashtag - whoever gets the most retweets, wins!
  • Tweet about AppSignal with the #AppSignalElixir hashtag - AppSignal will pick one winner at random!
  • Tweet about AppSignal with the #AppSignalElixir hashtag - whoever’s tweet impresses AppSignal the most, wins!
  • Whoever is first to post in AppSignal’s Elixir launch thread here on the forum - wins!

You have until Friday the 24th to get your tweets in (don’t forget the hashtag!) and keep your eyes peeled for AppSignal’s thread here on the forum.

So where next for the forum?

Well, we’re certainly not going to rest on our laurels! We have a sister site planned for later in the year and we will continue to tweak and shape the forum so that it does all it can to help move the community forward. The community that YOU are very much a part of.

While it may be difficult to imagine that you make a difference, you really do - your posts are not only read by members, but potentially thousands of guests who find our threads via search engines. Your friendly, helpful nature reflects on Elixir and the community as a whole… it’s what attracts people to the community, and keeps them coming back.

So well done each and every one of you - let’s make the next 12 months even better :023:

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###Here are a few fun facts

  • We’re now at 4,000 members strong - this is fantastic given 99% of the content here is viewable to guests and there are several other channels to get help with Elixir.
  • Speaking of guests, the forum has received just under 100,000 unique visitors - this is great news as it reflects massive interest in Elixir!
  • We have served over 1.1 million pages :003:

Top 10 visitor countries

  1. United States - 29.60%
  2. United Kingdom - 6.87%
  3. Germany - 5.25%
  4. Poland - 5.13%
  5. Canada - 3.84%
  6. Russia - 3.70%
  7. Brazil - 3.22%
  8. Netherlands - 2.80%
  9. Japan - 2.30%
  10. India - 2.30%

Top 10 browsers used are

  1. Chrome - 66.27%
  2. Safari - 20.21%
  3. Firefox - 9.99%
  4. Safari (in-app) - 1.88%
  5. Opera - 0.54%
  6. Internet Explorer - 0.39%
  7. Edge - 0.33%
  8. Android Webview - 0.07%
  9. Android Browser - 0.05%
  10. YaBrowser - 0.05%

Top 10 Operating Systems

  1. Macintosh - 44.50%
  2. Windows - 15.71%
  3. Linux - 15.57%
  4. iOS - 13.43%
  5. Android - 10.41%
  6. Windows Phone - 0.14%
  7. Chrome OS - 0.11%
  8. (not set) - 0.05%
  9. FreeBSD - 0.04%
  10. BlackBerry - 0.03%
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Let me just say: Wow.

Wow.

Thank you, @AstonJ for starting this forum and managing it very expertly :slight_smile: .

It is an absolute joy to be part of this community.
Great job, everone!

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It’s definitely a good sign if a relatively new language like Elixir is on the rise and the stats seem to confirm this.

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Happy birthday and congratulations for being the best community forum so far!

I really must thank you because the forum got me more and more into this language, and for the first time on my life I got some pull requests approved on the core of the language I’m working with! That’s priceless!

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Thank you @AstonJ for starting and managing this forum effectively. Keep it up :slight_smile:

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Just a quick bump of this, today is the last day to get your Twitter entries in for the AppSignal giveaway :023:

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I have a request if you could provide updated stats, similar to what you have provided in Feb 2017 (see above).

I am curious after 5 years of Elixir Forum.

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It’s not our birthday till next week Zaki :lol:

Unfortunately we don’t have access to many of the same stats as we stopped using Google Analytics some time ago (the Discourse stats are good enough imo) …but I will see what I can do :003:

In the meantime you might want to check out our 2021 update:

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As a Google Analytics alternative, you could try Matomo. Unless, of course, you wish to avoid the issue altogether :slight_smile:

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Thanks Yorick :smiley:

I’ll check it out (and https://www.awstats.org is also worth a look for anyone who wants self-hosted) although I think the Discourse stats are more than adequate for our purposes :blush: (particularly since it’s all in-house/no ‘sharing’ or being hosted on external servers or services :003:).

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Blackberry? :rofl:

Man, it feels like this forum had been around for longer than just a year, this forum feels very “central” :sweat_smile:

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I laughed on Bberry as well.

The forum though, it was one year old back in 2017 :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I saw the thread title as having recent activity, and thought for a minute it might be over on the DevTalk forum instead!

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Ahhh I saw it on the recently posted list and thought that they were one year old now :rofl:

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Tbh I think many of us were surprised to see it even back then :lol:

Devtalk’s only 7 or so months old Dave :101:

We are going to be 5 years old… tomorrow in fact :003:

I am not sure when I will be able to post something though - I haven’t even started working on the draft yet :icon_eek: (I wish there was a mind-to-text machine because it’s feels like I am forever writing something and that would make life SO much easier for me! :upside_down_face:)

That’s still a lot closer to one year, whether by multiplying/dividing or by adding/subtracting, than the age of the Elixir forum!

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Haha true.

I also came across an article about others in the space - I knew they were old, but didn’t think HN was set up in 2007 and lobstrs in 2011!

(I love how we’re already offering a pretty decent and compelling alternative, and how I hope Elixir and Erlang will be able to benefit from it in the not too distant future :003:)

OMG, my country (France) is even not in the Top 10: this will not ease my mission of Elixir evangelization ! :roll_eyes:

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