iamnotjusthera
Newbie
- Jun 12, 2026
- 28
- 28
Hello forum, Hera here 
This journey thread is coming a little late - around 30 days late to be exact. I wanted to start earlier, but between building, fixing problems, and keeping everything running, I never really found the time or energy to document it.
The idea of this thread is simple: I’ll post updates as things happen and share the progress, numbers, wins, mistakes, and everything happening behind the scenes.
This forum runs on XenForo and started as an alternative to bigger communities like SimpCity (SC) and Social Media Girls. At the beginning, it honestly felt impossible. I was posting content myself, commenting from different accounts, and sharing links everywhere just to make the place feel alive. But every time I stepped away, the forum went quiet. Also, the whole thing was packed initially in 3 stages (forum, video sharing script, monetization with OF). The first 2 steps were done, but I am still so far away from the end.
Then one morning I woke up and saw over 1,000 new users overnight.
Turns out SC had closed registrations and people started looking for alternatives. Users kept pouring in, I kept importing and posting more content, and growth exploded. The problem was we weren’t ready. Weak hosting, messy categories, no prefixes, missing rules, barely any addons, chaos. Somehow, during all of that, I found a few active and trustworthy people who became moderators, and together we managed to keep things moving. One of our biggest strengths became mass importing content and we filled over 900 requests in less than 24 hours.
Now things have changed. SC reopened registrations and naturally our growth slowed down. We went from around 2,500 new users per day to roughly 600.
At the moment I am writing this, the forum has exactly.
• 23,732 members
• 17,280 posts
• 1,898 threads
Not bad for the first month. I’ll try to keep this thread updated daily and share how things go from here. Feel free to ask, suggest and spread the journey
This journey thread is coming a little late - around 30 days late to be exact. I wanted to start earlier, but between building, fixing problems, and keeping everything running, I never really found the time or energy to document it.
The idea of this thread is simple: I’ll post updates as things happen and share the progress, numbers, wins, mistakes, and everything happening behind the scenes.
This forum runs on XenForo and started as an alternative to bigger communities like SimpCity (SC) and Social Media Girls. At the beginning, it honestly felt impossible. I was posting content myself, commenting from different accounts, and sharing links everywhere just to make the place feel alive. But every time I stepped away, the forum went quiet. Also, the whole thing was packed initially in 3 stages (forum, video sharing script, monetization with OF). The first 2 steps were done, but I am still so far away from the end.
Then one morning I woke up and saw over 1,000 new users overnight.
Turns out SC had closed registrations and people started looking for alternatives. Users kept pouring in, I kept importing and posting more content, and growth exploded. The problem was we weren’t ready. Weak hosting, messy categories, no prefixes, missing rules, barely any addons, chaos. Somehow, during all of that, I found a few active and trustworthy people who became moderators, and together we managed to keep things moving. One of our biggest strengths became mass importing content and we filled over 900 requests in less than 24 hours.
Now things have changed. SC reopened registrations and naturally our growth slowed down. We went from around 2,500 new users per day to roughly 600.
At the moment I am writing this, the forum has exactly.
• 23,732 members
• 17,280 posts
• 1,898 threads
Not bad for the first month. I’ll try to keep this thread updated daily and share how things go from here. Feel free to ask, suggest and spread the journey
