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PhpBB 3.3.10

phpbb.com

31–40 of 203 posts

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#31
post #9

Every time I see hype about Mastodon and the fediverse I miss the phpBB days. There was something special about the interlocking network of forums that didn't need to "federate" in any formal capacity. We just joined communities we liked and formed overlapping networks like normal people do and always have done. No one at the time felt any need to try to accommodate the whole world in one venue. As someone who never…

I remember at the time eye-rolling a friend who intensely believed that circa 2002-2006 was a second golden age of the internet.

He was right!

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#32

This goes on to prove that PHP is still relevant today. No matter how many new frameworks come up, we all know PHP anyways.

every figgin web dev topic, popularity does not evidence merits. It's just a shitty language that existed at the right time when web technologies were booming.

When more options become available, people stop choosing PHP.

And please don't reply with js, like "but PHP is better than shit", that's a real high bar.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#33
post #32

This goes on to prove that PHP is still relevant today. No matter how many new frameworks come up, we all know PHP anyways.

every figgin web dev topic, popularity does not evidence merits. It's just a shitty language that existed at the right time when web technologies were booming. When more options become available, people stop choosing PHP. And please don't reply with js, like "but PHP is better than shit", that's a real high bar.

What exactly makes PHP 8 shit?

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#34
post #33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

every figgin web dev topic, popularity does not evidence merits. It's just a shitty language that existed at the right time when web technologies were booming. When more options become available, people stop choosing PHP. And please don't reply with js, like "but PHP is better than shit", that's a real high bar.

What exactly makes PHP 8 shit?

no one has discussed it a million times on HN, so I don't exactly know

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#35

This goes on to prove that PHP is still relevant today. No matter how many new frameworks come up, we all know PHP anyways.

PHP is still one of the fastest ways to not only program a quick and dirty web app, but more importantly deploy a web app.

I think people who hate PHP, forgot how painful it was to develop server side apps before PHP.

I think one of the greatest legacy of PHP was brining "Serverless" hosting to the masses, where you only focus on the "upload" of the code, and you didn't need an ISS or Linux expert to deploy your projects.

Yeah, PHP had a weird teenage phase, but even JS and Python still have a lot of weird things too (specially JS). But modern frameworks as Laravel, make PHP a great alternative for DJango/FastAPI, Rails or Nest.js.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#36
post #9

Every time I see hype about Mastodon and the fediverse I miss the phpBB days. There was something special about the interlocking network of forums that didn't need to "federate" in any formal capacity. We just joined communities we liked and formed overlapping networks like normal people do and always have done. No one at the time felt any need to try to accommodate the whole world in one venue. As someone who never…

I remember at the time eye-rolling a friend who intensely believed that circa 2002-2006 was a second golden age of the internet. He was right!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times!

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#37
post #9

Every time I see hype about Mastodon and the fediverse I miss the phpBB days. There was something special about the interlocking network of forums that didn't need to "federate" in any formal capacity. We just joined communities we liked and formed overlapping networks like normal people do and always have done. No one at the time felt any need to try to accommodate the whole world in one venue. As someone who never…

As a fellow internet old timer, I agree that social media never really hooked me. I still spend vastly more time reading and posting on the SomethingAwful forums, which have been going for more than 20 years at this point, than I do Twitter. Maybe it's just "old man yells at cloud" and me refusing to change with the times, but I just strongly prefer the dynamics of forums.

Forums are also great for niche interests and communities. I used to be super into homebrewing beer (til kids happened), and there's a site called HomebrewTalk that was THE place to go to geek out on the hobby. People would share recipes, tips, photos of cool equipment they'd bought or built, industry news, etc. It's not something you can really replicate on Facebook or Twitter. I'm sure there is a homebrewing Twitter community, but by the nature of the app it's going to be much more what you're doing in the moment commentary than long form writeups preserved for all time. Both formats have their place.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#38
I used to despise PhpBB, at the time I thought it was vastly inferior to SMF. SMF seemed far more professional, the closest you could get to vbulletin while being free.

In retrospect I miss it just as much. I really do mourn the loss of communities I was part of, I even owned one for a short while.

The friends, the discussions, the projects, all lost to time.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#39
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drupal's been on the heavy decline over the past 10 years. Drupal 8/9/10 might turn it around now that Drupal 7 is set to officially retire eventually but it's not had the staying power in the way Wordpress has. Drupal doesn't really seem to have an ecosystem left anymore.

Sites like Wix and Squarespace really undermined Drupal and other similar OSS offerings. There are still things you can only do with a custom sytem, but for most use-cases commercial site-design tools can get you up and running with much less upfront cost. I designed & built about 20 websites from 2007 to 2014 or so, all with custom designs and backed by an off-the-shelf CMS. Except for the few I maintain for close f…

I think Drupal had largely retreated to being a tool for larger sites before Squarespace’s ascent. That end of the market has increasingly been eaten up by moderately author- and marketer-friendly commercial enterpriseware from providers like Adobe and Progress. It’s a shame, because they are expensive and inhibiting tools, but security and integration demands and the relative prestige of buying blue chip, expensive software have been faster growing primary considerations.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who never understood the appeal of Twitter or Facebook, the new wave of FOSS social apps feels very alien to me. Forums felt like writing emails in the open. Twitter felt like texting in the open. Not sure what the next thing will be! I say this as someone with 1k+ posts on multiple forums (essentially archived at this point).

> Forums felt like writing emails in the open. Actually, most of my favorite forums were only accessible if you registered, which in several cases required an invite. So it was less like writing letters in the open and much more like getting together with my bowling buddies or whatever. Just a group of friends who you hang out with from time to time.

Interesting! I usually see forums with hidden sections for long-time members, whether that was by registration time, post count, or manual addition. TIGForums has a fun forum section you can actually see with 0 posts (registered) and then again at a much higher post count. It vanishes as soon you do you first post.

I more meant "email" for content length, at least with my personal experience--forum posts were more like longer letter/email lengths, and Twitter felt more like texting with shorter notes (huge twitter threads aside).

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