Python Discord is created

Joe Banks becomes one of the owners around 3 days after it is created, and Leon Sandøy (lemon) joins the owner team later in the year, when the community has around 300 members.

Python Discord hits 1,000 members

Our main source of new users at this point is a post on Reddit that happens to get very good SEO. We are one of the top 10 search engine hits for the search term "python discord".

Our logo is born. Thanks @Aperture!

PyDis hits 2,000 members; pythondiscord.com and @Python are live

The public moderation bot we're using at the time, Rowboat, announces it will be shutting down. We decide that we'll write our own bot to handle moderation, so that we can have more control over its features. We also buy a domain and start making a website in Flask.

First code jam with the theme “snakes”

Our very first Code Jam attracts a handful of users who work in random teams of 2. We ask our participants to write a snake-themed Discord bot. Most of the code written for this jam still lives on in Sir Lancebot, and you can play with it by using the .snakes command. For more information on this event, see the event page

The privacy policy is created

Since data privacy is quite important to us, we create a privacy page pretty much as soon as our new bot and site starts collecting some data. To this day, we keep our privacy policy up to date with all changes, and since April 2020 we've started doing monthly data reviews.

Do You Even Python and PyDis merger

At this point in time, there are only two serious Python communities on Discord - Ours, and one called Do You Even Python. We approach the owners of DYEP with a bold proposal - let's shut down their community, replace it with links to ours, and in return we will let their staff join our staff. This gives us a big boost in members, and eventually leads to @eivl and @Mr. Hemlock joining our Admin team

PyDis hits 5,000 members and partners with r/Python

As we continue to grow, we approach the r/Python subreddit and ask to become their official Discord community. They agree, and we become listed in their sidebar, giving us yet another source of new members.

PyDis is now partnered with Discord; the vanity URL discord.gg/python is created

After being rejected for their Partner program several times, we finally get approved. The recent partnership with the r/Python subreddit plays a significant role in qualifying us for this partnership.

First Hacktoberfest PyDis event; @Sir Lancebot is created

We create a second bot for our community and fill it up with simple, fun and relatively easy issues. The idea is to create an approachable arena for our members to cut their open-source teeth on, and to provide lots of help and hand-holding for those who get stuck. We're training our members to be productive contributors in the open-source ecosystem.

PyDis hits 10,000 members

We partner with RLBot, move from GitLab to GitHub, and start putting together the first Advent of Code event.

django-simple-bulma is released on PyPi

Our very first package on PyPI, django-simple-bulma is a package that sets up the Bulma CSS framework for your Django application and lets you configure everything in settings.py.

PyDis hits 15,000 members; the “hot ones special” video is released

The Django rewrite of pythondiscord.com is now live!

The site is getting more and more complex, and it's time for a rewrite. We decide to go for a different stack, and build a website based on Django, DRF, Bulma and PostgreSQL.

The code of conduct is created

Inspired by the Adafruit, Rust and Django communities, an essential community pillar is created; Our Code of Conduct.

Sebastiaan Zeef becomes an owner

After being a long time active contributor to our projects and the driving force behind many of our events, Sebastiaan Zeef joins the Owners Team alongside Joe & Leon.

PyDis hits 30,000 members

More than tripling in size since the year before, the community hits 30000 users. At this point, we're probably the largest Python chat community on the planet.

PyDis sixth code jam with the theme “Ancient technology” and the technology Kivy

Our Code Jams are becoming an increasingly big deal, and the Kivy core developers join us to judge the event and help out our members during the event. One of them, @tshirtman, even joins our staff!

The new help channel system is live

We release our dynamic help-channel system, which allows you to claim your very own help channel instead of fighting over the static help channels. We release a Help Channel Guide to help our members fully understand how the system works.

Python Discord hits 40,000 members, and is now bigger than Liechtenstein.

PyDis Game Jam 2020 with the “Three of a Kind” theme and Arcade as the technology

The creator of Arcade, Paul Vincent Craven, joins us as a judge. Several of the Code Jam participants also end up getting involved contributing to the Arcade repository.

ModMail is now live

Having originally planned to write our own ModMail bot from scratch, we come across an exceptionally good ModMail bot by kyb3r and decide to just self-host that one instead.

Python Discord is now listed on python.org/community

After working towards this goal for months, we finally work out an arrangement with the PSF that allows us to be listed on that most holiest of websites: https://python.org/. There was much rejoicing.

Python Discord Public Statistics are now live

After getting numerous requests to publish beautiful data on member count and channel use, we create stats.pythondiscord.com for all to enjoy.

PyDis summer code jam 2020 with the theme “Early Internet” and Django as the technology

Sponsored by the Django Software Foundation and JetBrains, the Summer Code Jam for 2020 attracts hundreds of participants, and sees the creation of some fantastic projects. Check them out in our judge stream below:

Python Discord is now the new home of the PyWeek event!

PyWeek, a game jam that has been running since 2005, joins Python Discord as one of our official events. Find more information about PyWeek on their official website.

Python Discord hosts the 2020 CPython Core Developer Q&A

Python Discord hits 100,000 members!

Only six months after hitting 40,000 users, we hit 100,000 users. A monumental milestone, and one we're very proud of. To commemorate it, we create this timeline.

We migrate all our infrastructure to Kubernetes

As our tech stack grows, we decide to migrate all our services over to a container orchestration paradigm via Kubernetes. This gives us better control and scalability. Joe Banks takes on the role as DevOps Lead.

Advent of Code attracts hundreds of participants

A total of 443 Python Discord members sign up to be part of Eric Wastl's excellent Advent of Code event. As always, we provide dedicated announcements, scoreboards, bot commands and channels for our members to enjoy the event in.

We release The PEP 8 song

We release the PEP 8 song on our YouTube channel, which finds tens of thousands of listeners!

We now have 150,000 members!

Our growth continues to accelerate.

Leon Sandøy appears on Talk Python To Me

Leon goes on the Talk Python to Me podcast with Michael Kennedy to discuss the history of Python Discord, the critical importance of culture, and how to run a massive community. You can find the episode at talkpython.fm.

We're on the Teaching Python podcast!

Leon joins Sean and Kelly on the Teaching Python podcast to discuss how the pandemic has changed the way we learn, and what role communities like Python Discord can play in this new world. You can find the episode at teachingpython.fm.

New feature: Weekly discussion channel

Every week (or two weeks), we'll be posting a new topic to discuss in a channel called #weekly-topic-discussion. Our inaugural topic is a PyCon talk by Anthony Shaw called Wily Python: Writing simpler and more maintainable Python..

Summer Code Jam 2020 Highlights

We release a new video to our YouTube showing the best projects from the Summer Code Jam 2020. Better late than never!