State of the Server – January 2023
Welcome to the first State of the Server for DMV.Community! I decided to steal this idea from https://retro.pizza/@trixter because it's an excellent idea. Thank you trixter for the inspiration!
The server is now almost 2 months old! We saw explosive growth in December which required a server upgrade. Since then we've seen what a lot of Mastodon servers are seeing: people signing up and never using their accounts. Inactive accounts get removed after some time. We're currently at 213 active users! But what I really love to see is that interaction is up 14% over the last 30 days, which means people are talking more. And isn't that why we're all here?
We've gained a DMV weather bot, and I've set up news bots for the Baltimore Sun, the Virginia Mercury, and DCist.
I finished tweaking the catppuccin dark theme for the web app. At some point soon I'll make that a selectable option in the settings so you can choose the original Mastodon dark theme or the catppuccin theme. Also on the design front, I've commissioned a new logo for the server which can be seen on the About page.
A couple other things I've added are: full-text search of your own posts and favorites via OpenSearch integration, a character limit increase to 750, language translation via libretranslate, and a server-specific Elk frontend at https://elk.dmv.community.
Donations are still coming in and we are at a current balance of about $350. After the server upgrade in December and database migration in January we are up to a monthly cost of about $100. Remember, all this information can be seen in the Google Sheet here:
Thank you to all who have donated to offset costs and support this community! Ask of the donation methods can be found at the bottom of the About page of the server.
That's it for this update! The server is in a really good place right now, the community is doing well, and we have the capacity for a lot more members, so tell your friends and family about us!
I'll try to keep these updates going on a monthly basis. Don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions, concerns, or suggestions, and remember to report and block any rule breakers though Mastodon's moderation tools.
Have fun. Be safe. Live long and prosper. 🖖