I recently got a discourse message saying it was my anneversary for a post and then I was curious when we started the website. As a co-creator, I would have posted one the first day. That day was in April, 2022.
Now 4 years later, I’m quite impressed with how things have gone for Classical Theravada (CT)
It should be noted that @RobertK had CT already as a subdomain from a discourse-hosting website. He was the moderator in dhammawheel.com (and still is). I expressed my frustration in being outnumbered when we talk about CT issues and we decided to make his website a top level domain. With my technical skills and my friend from a Myanmar Ubuntu group, we were able to get a full discourse setup going for $5 per month, just as the discourse website claims. I sponsored the first year with my donor and Robert bought the domain name. We have since expanded our server but our costs are still cheaper than the original subdomain that Robert started in 2020ish.
Originally, we thought 20 users after one or two years would be a winning accomplishment for our troubles. Today, we have over 300 users. While, not everyone is “regular” to post, we do get a lot of viewership in our stats and readership.
We are both very happy that we started this, and a friendship has formed from this project as well. It is great to own our own server, and “make our own rules” as the FAQ says. Robert and I communicate often about CT, splitting posts, closing topics, flagging, and unflagging posts in order to keep a safe place for the CT’ers to discuss things.
The negative side affect is that we are a little boring and we don’t have so much debate or heated debates. But that was the design. I hope you like the website… we do too 
