Forum Traffic Explosion

The new personal development forums have been exploding with traffic over the last 2-1/2 days. There are already over 3000 posts, and registered members will probably pass 1000 by the end of the day.

There are so many great topics being discussed that I regret it’s humanly impossible to keep up with them all.

I spent nearly the entire weekend installing various plugins, tweaking the forum settings, responding to private messages (PMs), doing various administrative tasks, communicating with the moderators, and popping in and out of various discussions. It’s wonderful to finally have the chance to get to know so many of you… and especially to see you getting to know each other.

I’m especially glad to see the Local Groups forum getting so much attention. Its purpose is to help you connect with people near you who share a passion for personal growth.

The server has been managing the load just fine, but there have been a couple short-lived spikes that pushed it to capacity. I’ve decided to go ahead and upgrade the server, since I want the forums to be very fast and responsive even under temporary traffic spikes.

Consequently, there will be a small amount of downtime within the next few days when the upgrade is performed. Ideally it should only be a few minutes, so don’t panic if you see the site offline at some point. I’m just waiting to hear back from my web provider on when they can schedule it.

Launching these forums has been a nostalgic experience for me because Erin and I originally met on a BBS in 1994. It was a San Fernando Valley BBS called DreamScape with 24 dial-up lines (northwest part of Los Angeles). Erin and I found we shared an interest in lucid dreaming, so I invited her over to my apartment one day, and we talked for two hours straight. We had a lot in common, including going to the same college at the same time, even though we never met each other there. Our relationship blossomed into a friendship and then turned romantic after a few weeks. A few months later we moved in together. We later married on the 4-year anniversary of the day we met. We were always grateful to DreamScape’s founder and Sysop, and we often still call each other by our old BBS handles, Savage and Sephira.

Erin and I understand the potential for these forums to change lives even without our direct involvement, and it’s going to be wonderful watching them unfold over the next few years. Some of you will sure meet your soulmates through these forums. Others will make new best friends, switch careers, or break long-term addictions. I feel very blessed just to be a part of this. Getting these forums up and running was a lot of work (high traffic makes careful planning essential), seeing them in action is incredibly rewarding.

What surprised me most is just how energized I get from participating in the forums myself. I’m normally a highly positive person, but being in the midst of such a huge group of like-minded people has put me on positive juice overload. 🙂

I can’t know in advance how this community will evolve, but what I do know is that something wonderful has just happened. It reminds me of the feeling I had when my kids were born.