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Ken W Alger’s nine-year look at his DEV Community account turned up a striking contrast: he reports 32,474 views across 44 posts published from 2017 to 2019, then 86 posts in the six months after returning in March 2026. Those figures describe one creator’s account, not a platform-wide trend. The more useful lesson is that DEV’s API can expose account history the dashboard may not show—but the data has important gaps.
What Alger found in his account history
Alger began publishing on DEV in April 2017, had a stretch of almost no posting for about four years, and returned in March 2026. In his September 24, 2026 account, he reports that his 44 posts from 2017 through 2019 drew 32,474 views. He also reports publishing 86 posts during the six months following his return and having a little over 18,000 current followers.
These numbers describe different things: views accumulated by an older group of articles, post volume during a later period, and a current follower total. They are not a controlled before-and-after test. The older posts had years to collect views, while the later posts were much newer when he wrote. The figures alone do not explain why performance or follower count differed.
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Alger’s purpose was to connect publication dates with follower growth. As he put it, “There is an API. It will tell you things about your writing that the dashboard will not.” The API makes a more detailed personal analysis possible, but it does not turn an account history into a complete or causal record.
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What DEV’s API can add to the dashboard
DEV runs on Forem, whose official API documentation recommends API v1. The documented authenticated endpoints cover a user’s articles and followers, analytics totals and historical series, follower engagement, and a dashboard bundle. Access to many endpoints requires an API key created in account settings.
For v1 responses, requests need the header Accept: application/vnd.forem.api-v1+json. Alger also sends the key in an api-key header. He warns that leaving out the v1 Accept header may return an older v0-shaped response, which can make a script appear to work while delivering a different response structure than expected.
Use the current Forem API v1 documentation as the reference for endpoint behavior. An older DEV Team API overview from 2019 is historical context, not a guide to current endpoint semantics.
Why follower data is not a historical follower-count chart
Alger’s analysis used /api/followers/users, which returns records for current followers, including a follow date. Sorting those dates can show when the people who still follow the account joined. It cannot recover people who followed and later unfollowed, because they no longer appear in the current-follower list.
That distinction changes what a chart means. A curve built from the dates of current followers can only accumulate as it moves forward in time; it is not the account’s historical net follower count. It cannot show unfollows, retention, or how many followers the account had at an earlier date. A post date appearing near a cluster of follow dates is an observation, not proof that the post caused those follows.
How to collect the data without mistaking it for a perfect archive
- Create an API key in DEV account settings. Keep it private and send it in an
api-keyrequest header when an endpoint requires authentication. - Request the v1 response format. Include
Accept: application/vnd.forem.api-v1+jsonso the response matches the current v1 serializer. - Choose a larger page size where supported. Forem’s documentation describes
per_pagevalues up to 1,000 by default, though an instance can lower that ceiling; the followers endpoint documents a default of 80 per page. Check the batch size actually returned rather than assuming the requested size was honored. - Paginate carefully and preserve progress. Save each page or checkpoint during a long pull, and handle HTTP 429 responses by slowing down or retrying appropriately. Alger reports that using 1,000 rather than the default 80 followers per page reduced his pull from 227 requests to 19 and took 31 seconds. That is his reported run, not a guaranteed duration or request count for another account or instance.
- Keep the metrics and dates distinct. Record publication dates, article-level views or reactions, follower follow dates, and the date you pulled the data as separate fields. Treat an API extract as a snapshot, not a complete historical ledger.
A community tutorial published in May 2024 demonstrates a workflow for fetching a user’s posts and exporting JSON-derived records to CSV. It can help illustrate an analysis pipeline, but current endpoint details should be checked against Forem’s official v1 documentation.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What nine years of account data can—and cannot—tell you
A retrospective pull can reveal patterns that were never manually recorded, but completeness varies by metric and date. Alger says historical analytics become less complete farther back in time, so daily figures should not be treated as equally reliable across all nine years.
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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Before comparing two writing periods, account for the age of each article, how many posts were published and at what cadence, which metric is being compared, and how complete the underlying data is for that date range. API version and pagination behavior matter too: an incomplete page pull or an older response serializer can change what ends up in an analysis.
Most importantly, an individual creator’s history is not a benchmark for DEV authors generally. Alger’s reported 32,474 views, 86-post return period, and current follower count make his own publishing history legible; they do not establish typical outcomes or show that any particular publishing strategy caused growth.
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