Every forum loses people quietly. They do not announce it. They post less, then not at all, then one day they stop coming — and by the time anybody notices, the person has been gone for months and there is nothing left to say to them.
Muster is the list of who is walking out while there is still time to do something about it, with the reason beside each name and a record of what you did and whether it worked.
It is a worklist, not a dashboard
There are no charts in it. No retention curves, no cohort grids, no number that goes up. None of that tells you who to talk to this morning.
What is on the page is a name, why that person is slipping, the evidence behind it, and the three things you can do about it: I reached out, snooze, not a concern — plus a note to your future self.
The five reasons
- Ignored — their last posts got nothing back: no reply, no quote, no reaction.
- Slipping — posting far below their own rate, but not gone.
- Lurking — still turns up, no longer says anything.
- Went quiet — was a regular, has stopped entirely.
- Never started — joined, never really posted, stopped coming.
They are ordered so the most actionable is first. Ignored is the one worth having: went quiet tells you somebody left, their last three posts got nothing back tells you why — and it is the one cause you can fix today, by answering them.
Every reason is measured against that member’s own rate, not the forum’s. Somebody who posted twice a month for a year has not gone quiet by posting twice this month; a daily poster dropping to twice has.
Whether it worked, measured
Mark somebody as reached out and Muster watches for them. If they turn up again after the date you contacted them, the concern moves to Came back by itself.
Measured from the contact date on purpose: measuring from when the concern opened would let your outreach take credit for somebody who had already come back on their own.
Recorded, not sent
Muster never messages anybody. You reach out however suits — a private message, an email, a reply in the thread they abandoned — and tell the list that you did.
That line is deliberate. An extension that sent the message itself would be making deliverability and consent promises it cannot keep, and the one thing a tool like this has to be trusted about is whether the outreach actually happened.
It is also admin-side entirely: no member ever learns that a list exists, or that they are on it.
What it costs to run
One nightly scan, plus a Scan now button for the first time. A handful of counted queries per member, nothing on a page request, and nothing added to the pages your members see.
Buying it
$30 a year, which covers updates and support while the licence is current.
- Go to https://ernestdefoe.online/account and sign in, or register if you have not already.
- Open the store there and buy Muster. Payment is by PayPal.
- Your account then shows the token for the private Composer repository.
Then, once:
composer config repositories.ernestdefoe composer https://ernestdefoe.online/composer
composer require ernestdefoe/muster
php flarum migrate && php flarum cache:clear
Open Muster in the admin panel and press Scan now. After that it runs itself nightly.
Links
Questions welcome here. I am particularly interested in whether the five reasons match what you see on your own forum — the weights and thresholds are the part reasonable people will disagree about, and they are all configurable.
