Slack community has hit 3,000 members
by Matt StuddertYesterday the Frontend Mentor community jumped above 3,000 members.
I created the community in October 2018 and it's grown steadily ever since.
It's been amazing to see it grow and see people helping each other out. I'm still extremely active in it reviewing people's code and offering help if people get stuck on the challenges. But it's great to know that if I'm not on it for a day or two now everyone just helps each other and cracks on with it.
Having a Slack community is also an amazing tool for product development on your platform. You see patterns start to emerge in conversations and they can give you ideas for new features. For example, a lot of people have started collaborating on the challenges in Slack. So I've done a number of user interviews and will be looking to add a collaborations feature to the platform itself as a result.
If you have a product/platform of any sort, I'd strongly recommend starting up a community, whether it's Slack or Discord. It's such a great way to build a strong relationship with the people in your community.
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Hi @mattts. Thanks for sharing the achievement and congrats on the growth!
As you recommend, I've been considering using Slack for building a community. One thing I can't seem to find answers about is how costs are managed for Slack communities. It seems way too expensive per user to to be on premium. Especially when doing transactional purchases rather than subscriptions.
How do you keep costs down, while providing the community what they need? Are you just using the free version of Slack and living with associated limits?
Side note - Frontened Mentor loads amazingly quickly (obviously a good sign for a company that focuses on frontend dev work 😂)! Awesome work!
Thanks for any guidance.
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Haha, thanks! I am using the free version of Slack for the FEM community. You could use the paid version if access to your community was paid. I decided that I wanted the community to be open for all, so the free version was the logical choice.
Another option could be a self-hosted Discord server, which would give the best of both worlds. The reason I chose Slack was that it's where a lot of developers hang out during the week anyway, so it's a tool that's already in their daily workflow.
Let me know if you have any other questions. I hope that helps!
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That's very helpful. Thank you!
I think I'll go ahead and start out with free, then upgrade when it's clear the restricted features are necessary and there's a model that supports the cost.
I'll consider self-hosting discord later, if I get any traction and the cost/effort eval makes sense.
Thanks again!
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You're welcome! That sounds like a good strategy. Best of luck!
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Hey Matt good to hear your community is working out well!
If you want to provide some extra value to your members then check out my latest product Lowdown. It turns your best Slack content into a weekly newsletter, keeping your members up to date. https://getlowdown.com/
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@mattts have you seen an increase in retention since launching your Slack community? If so, do you know how much?
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I created the Slack community when I originally launched the site, so I don't have a before and after comparison, unfortunately!
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Hey, @mattts, 3000 is a huge number, congratulations 🎉!
We (with @maxim_leonovich) are building a tool for helpdesk and knowledge management in Slack. Would you mind to have a 15mins quick call with us and answer a few questions 🙄? -
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For the people who are wondering are HTML and CSS still worthy to learn in 2020
https://horizontech.dev/blogs/Vikash/Are-HTML-and-CSS-still-worthy-to-learn-in-2020
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Do you also have a newsletter?
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Hi Pedro, yeah we do! Please feel free to join it. The sign-up form is on the homepage near the bottom 🙂
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Seems like a cool project! I'll have to join the slack group later!
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Thanks, Graham! I look forward to seeing you in the Slack community! 🙂
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Awesome progress Matt well done
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Thanks a lot!
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Matt, I run a design community with close to 5k members and have been exploring mentorship features. Would love to connect sometime and learn about your experience
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Sounds great! The best way to get in touch is either through my Twitter or through the chat widget on the site. I look forward to talking more.
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This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
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I promote it in a few places:
- There's been a sign-up component on the site since I launched it on the homepage and inner pages.
- There's also a designated page for it that can be found from the footer.
- I mention it on the solution submission page, to say "if you get stuck and would like help, please feel free to join our Slack community".
- I also mention it in the README file for each challenge download with the same kind of copy.
- Occasionally I'll promote it on Twitter, especially when we hit a milestone number.
There's quite a social element to what Frontend Mentor does, so I find a lot of people invite their friends as well.
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