phpc.social February 2025 Update
Published on February 22, 2025 by Ben Ramsey
Hi, all! 👋
Welcome to another PHP Community Foundation update!
First, I'd like to extend a very special "thank you" to the awesome folks at Vultr, who generously donate the cloud infrastructure for phpc.social! 🎉
Last April, at the PHP[TEK] conference in Chicago, we got a chance to meet some of the members of the Vultr team, who showed us just how awesome they are by joining us at WurstCon following the main conference. It turns out they're big fans of PHP, and they use it heavily in their infrastructure. We're really excited to partner with them as in-kind supporters of the phpc.social infrastructure. Drop them a line to thank them for supporting the PHP community, and be sure to check out their cloud services.
Thanks, Vultr team! 🙏
In my last update, I covered a 15-month span of activity. This time, I've aligned our record-keeping and books to the calendar year (January through December), so we'll take a look back at 2024 highlights of our Fediverse community.
Welcome to another PHP Community Foundation update!
First, I'd like to extend a very special "thank you" to the awesome folks at Vultr, who generously donate the cloud infrastructure for phpc.social! 🎉
Last April, at the PHP[TEK] conference in Chicago, we got a chance to meet some of the members of the Vultr team, who showed us just how awesome they are by joining us at WurstCon following the main conference. It turns out they're big fans of PHP, and they use it heavily in their infrastructure. We're really excited to partner with them as in-kind supporters of the phpc.social infrastructure. Drop them a line to thank them for supporting the PHP community, and be sure to check out their cloud services.
Thanks, Vultr team! 🙏
In my last update, I covered a 15-month span of activity. This time, I've aligned our record-keeping and books to the calendar year (January through December), so we'll take a look back at 2024 highlights of our Fediverse community.
By the numbers
As of February 21, phpc.social has:
- 5,056 total members
- 320,720 total statuses
- 40,103 total reach (number of other servers we federate with)
- 151 total financial contributors
- 76 active recurring financial contributors
Over the last month, we've had 853 active users, 58 new users, and 24,645 social interactions (posts, likes, etc.). In that same time frame, our moderation team has responded to and resolved 14 moderation reports.
Our infrastructure
As I mentioned earlier, Vultr provides our infrastructure, which is located in their Amsterdam data center in Netherlands. For fast media delivery at the "edge," we use Bunny CDN at the standard tier, with all regions enabled.
Here's what we're currently running at Vultr:
Here's what we're currently running at Vultr:
- App server (web, streaming, Sidekiq queues, ElasticSearch): "High performance" AMD EPYC with 8 vCPUs and 16GB of RAM
- Database: Managed Postgres, 3 vCPUs, 8GB RAM, 256GB disk
- Redis: Managed Redis, 1 vCPU, 2GB RAM
- Object Storage (S3-like): ~500GB
The app server is sized this large because we've been CPU-bound in the past. The database is sized as such to ensure enough storage space, since managed DBs at Vultr do not run on block storage. Redis is sized for RAM (application data caching).
Our app server saw about 2.6TB of bandwidth usage over the last month (1.5TB in, 1.1TB out). We see about 1TB of bandwidth per month go through Bunny CDN.
I'm eternally gratefully to Ian Littman who continues to maintain our infrastructure and responds to any server issues we might have. Downtime is rare, but when it does happen, we appreciate how supportive and patient all of you are. Thank you for being awesome!
Finances
Thank you so much for your generous support! This is your server, after all!
At the time of writing, we have $5,593.09 in our Open Collective account. There are a few February expenses that haven't been accounted for yet, so the actual number is a little less, but nevertheless, we have a strong balance.
Since we have a surplus, we have an opportunity to put these funds to work, serving the PHP community. It has been a long-term goal of mine to support PHP community initiatives through a foundation like this, and with this small buffer of funds, we can begin to realize this. I don't have any specifics to share right now, but I'll make sure you're kept up-to-date on anything we plan to do with your contributions.
You may download our statements for 2024, 2023, and 2022, and as always, you have access to see all our expenses and contributions at https://opencollective.com/phpcommunity/projects/phpc-social.
At the time of writing, we have $5,593.09 in our Open Collective account. There are a few February expenses that haven't been accounted for yet, so the actual number is a little less, but nevertheless, we have a strong balance.
Since we have a surplus, we have an opportunity to put these funds to work, serving the PHP community. It has been a long-term goal of mine to support PHP community initiatives through a foundation like this, and with this small buffer of funds, we can begin to realize this. I don't have any specifics to share right now, but I'll make sure you're kept up-to-date on anything we plan to do with your contributions.
You may download our statements for 2024, 2023, and 2022, and as always, you have access to see all our expenses and contributions at https://opencollective.com/phpcommunity/projects/phpc-social.
Compliance
If you've logged into the Mastodon web UI for phpc.social recently, you might have noticed a new announcement:
We have updated our server rules, per requirements of the United Kingdom's new Online Safety Act. The server rules that have changed are: "Sexually explicit or violent media must be marked as sensitive when posting" has changed to "No sexually explicit or violent media"; and "No content illegal in Germany or France" has changed to "No content illegal in Germany, France, or the United Kingdom"
In this ever-changing landscape of local laws regarding online content, we're committed to ensuring we remain in compliance for all of our members. We have a global membership, which means we have to remain aware of changes to local laws that can impact your use of our service.
To that end, Derick Rethans has diligently followed the UK Online Safety Act 2023 and has helped to ensure we are compliant. We've updated our server rules and Terms of Service accordingly.
To that end, Derick Rethans has diligently followed the UK Online Safety Act 2023 and has helped to ensure we are compliant. We've updated our server rules and Terms of Service accordingly.
Thank you!
I'll reiterate my statement from last year's update:
I've had a blast seeing this community grow and thrive, and it's been a joy to watch everyone interact with others around the Fediverse. It’s great to see new connections made, ideas shared, and important discussions, as well as silly, unimportant discussions.
This holds true today. Even when you leave phpc.social to start your own ActivityPub server or to join one where you've found "your people" and a deeper belonging, I'm excited we've been able to support a part of your Fediverse journey.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support! Please continue to support our efforts, and encourage others to do the same. Your contributions support our mission of fostering connections within the greater PHP community.
As I close, let me thank all our admins and moderators for all the work they do. They handle all new server join requests, respond to moderation reports, and keep everything running smoothly. Thank you, Ian, Mark, Tiffany, Derick, Alessandro, Kevin, Eric, Matthew, Augusto, Jeremy, Larry, Chris, Stephan, Paul, Skoop, Gemma, Andreas, and Sara!
With many thanks,
Ben Ramsey