Problem
Esteria no Sekai (星の世界, “World of Stars”) was a Cuban anime/gaming community running on rented forum + voice infrastructure under the Joven Club umbrella. Through 2019–2021 — peak COVID lockdowns in Cuba — it needed someone to keep the platform online, the community engaged, and moderation honest. Cuban internet conditions make any downtime expensive: rebuilding a community there is hard, because reconnecting members is hard.
Approach
The work split across three surfaces — and the work wasn’t only operations, it was building the platform first:
- Forum (Xenforo) — I owned almost all of the forum buildout, with a friend pitching in. Designed the themed categories that mapped community subcultures: Sala de Artistas (art), Biblioteca (books, magazines, reading discussion), Plaza de Producciones (creative work), Parque Musical (music), Zona de Combate (gaming). Beyond design, handled user permissions, database backups, and the routine ops nobody notices when the forum is working.
- Voice (TeamSpeak) — the whole TeamSpeak buildout was a team effort. We designed every channel ourselves: the room layout, the per-channel permissions, the welcome rooms for new arrivals, the curated ASCII art that telegraphs “this is a place with a character.” Nothing here was the default TeamSpeak experience — it was a deliberate piece of community architecture.
- Blog (WordPress) — a community-facing blog with posts and announcements.
Through the COVID quarantine, the platform did more than survive — it became a substitute for in-person social life for hundreds of users. Designed and moderated virtual programs: interactive quiz shows, themed channels for current anime seasons, scheduled events that members actually showed up to.
Outcome
At the snapshot shown here: 661 members, ~6,400 cumulative visitors, dozens of active threads at any time. Not enterprise scale — human scale. Every member was someone who logged in voluntarily, multiple times a week, because the platform stayed up and the rooms stayed warm.
Running it consistently for two years through a pandemic — backups, moderation, uptime, and the social glue — is the part that mattered.
