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PhpBB 3.3.10

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Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#181

Post by CM30 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #6

I'm surprised it's still around. They did a good job on the software, but discussion forums seemed to go belly-up, after Facebook took off (MySpace, too, I guess). Maybe they will make a comeback?

Honestly, I think a lot of different services and systems have hurt forums popularity wise, though it happened in stages rather than all at once.

Facebook Groups did damage to communities aimed at older and less savvy audiences.

Stack Overflow likely replaced quite a few tech communities (as did its spinoffs in that network).

Reddit replaced a lot of forums for niche topics and hobbies.

And Discord seems to have taken over for a lot of 'young person focused' topics like games, film, tv shows, web series, etc.

Discord has basically annihilated about two of those services as well as many smaller communities too. Stack Overflow is losing out to Discord servers (and possibly Slack instances) aimed at the users of a specific framework or language, and many of Reddit's communities seem to be switching over to there too.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#182

Post by o_____________o »

networked wrote: post #159
unixhero wrote: post #129

I jumped ship from phpbb as their develoment stalled. Then I switched to Simple Machines Forum, then development if that project stalled. Then I moved to VanillaForums, then development kind of slowed there. Now I am considering Discourse or NodeBB, which both are in an entirely different league of technology and sleekness. But now none of my friends wants to hang put in forums anymore. Oh well.

Open source Vanilla seems to not be doing well: https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/39204/where-do-we-... . It's a shame. I thought it had a nice UI: mobile-friendly, not very flashy, around 300K per page (less if assets are cached), rendered on the server. I wanted to migrate my FluxBB forum to Vanilla, since FluxBB is effectively discontinued in favor of Flarum. If I migrate my forum now, it will probably be…

fwiw I've come to similar conclusions, though I think Discourse has higher potential. For example, if you have the money, there are a couple of options to convert your instance into a native app. I'm doing some tests on a DigitalOcean instance and it doesn't seem that resource hungry so far.

The Flarum community seems much more friendly, DIY and open. Having to use PHP in 2023 is a little depressing, but it would presumably integrate more easily into other PHP projects like Wordpress.

I was hoping to use NodeBB for the pure js stack but it's missing some important features and the front end is greybearded out of using a modern framework because of "speed"[1]. You can use Postgres instead of Mongo, by the way:

> NodeBB Forum Software is powered by Node.js and supports either Redis, MongoDB, or a PostgreSQL database

[1]: https://community.nodebb.org/topic/14371/nodebb-reactjs/3?_=...

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#183

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

CM30 wrote: post #181
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #6

I'm surprised it's still around. They did a good job on the software, but discussion forums seemed to go belly-up, after Facebook took off (MySpace, too, I guess). Maybe they will make a comeback?

Honestly, I think a lot of different services and systems have hurt forums popularity wise, though it happened in stages rather than all at once. Facebook Groups did damage to communities aimed at older and less savvy audiences. Stack Overflow likely replaced quite a few tech communities (as did its spinoffs in that network). Reddit replaced a lot of forums for niche topics and hobbies. And Discord seems to have take…

I just got reminded of why I almost never visit Stack Overflow anymore.

Asked a pretty basic question, and immediately got two close votes; probably because it was a short, basic question.

It did get answered, though, as opposed to being ignored, like so many questions.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#184

Post by JamoneK »

echelon wrote: post #83
jdwithit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Oh, the memories! I feel you. There were so many good forums. Mostly lost to time. If anyone wants to see a classic 2000's-era forum, here's a bespoke one that I built back in 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20070104021525/http://forums.dsm... https://web.archive.org/web/20060630114446/http://forums.dsm... https://web.archive.org/web/20060415053845/http://dsmeet.com... https://web.archive.org/web/20070103011534/htt…

I remember DSMeet. Good times. Then the switch to Friendcodes.com & Oneclick Wi-Fi

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#185

Post by rcconf »

Every time I google something, I tend to add "reddit" at the end of it so I can see discussion between individuals and I hope I find an expert that can help me either understand or purchase something. I tend to also do this with "hacker news" for things related to technology.

Recently, I was looking for Espresso Machines and found https://www.home-barista.com/forums/ which is actually powered by PhpBB.

The amount of knowledge and information on that forum is changing the way I research products and search for things on the internet. I've learned so much deep knowledge on espresso machines and I've gone down rabbit holes of how water affects espresso machines.

It gave me a deep feeling of how awful Google and reddit are at having good quality information from experts. The users on the barista forums are just experts and have been around the forum for a very long time.

It's almost like Reddit and Google are fast food and Home Barista (and other forums that use PhpBB and similar technologies) are quality, home cooked meal past down from generations of knowledge.

Now I exclusively try to find forums for a specific topic and try to find the experts on those forums to get my information, usually through a forum.

Long live PhpBB and forums and these experts on there, it's a breath of fresh air exploring the internet away from the major social media products (including Google honestly.)

Note:

The fact that home-barista is using PhpBB is purely ironic, I did not know it was, this post just reminded me of a forum that had a wealth of information and that forums are great even in 2023, heh!

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#186

Post by nsonha »

archerx wrote: post #73
nsonha wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah, I see you’re just saying jt sucks just because the cargo cult says it sucks. Thanks for clarifying.

The cargo cult says it sucks AND I say it sucks. There is no “because”. Maybe if you’re better at logic you would be able to code languages other than PHP.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#187

Post by jamesfinlayson »

vanderZwan wrote: post #110
jamesfinlayson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be - at least the communities I used to participate in seem to use Discord now.

I really dislike using Discord and I can't even figure out why (so it's probably me). I do know it's not the part where it is a chat app per se - I'm happily using Zulip, managing with Slack, and WhatsApp, Telegram and Slack all have their place. But something about the UI/UX of chatting in Discord just makes it a stream of conversations where I can barely follow what's going on. Having said that in many contexts a f…

I agree - very easy to lose track of something in the random chat that occurs. I use Discord because there's where some discussion I'm interested in happens though - not much choice sometimes.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#188

Post by networked »

o_____________o wrote: post #182
networked wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source Vanilla seems to not be doing well: https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/39204/where-do-we-... . It's a shame. I thought it had a nice UI: mobile-friendly, not very flashy, around 300K per page (less if assets are cached), rendered on the server. I wanted to migrate my FluxBB forum to Vanilla, since FluxBB is effectively discontinued in favor of Flarum. If I migrate my forum now, it will probably be…

fwiw I've come to similar conclusions, though I think Discourse has higher potential. For example, if you have the money, there are a couple of options to convert your instance into a native app. I'm doing some tests on a DigitalOcean instance and it doesn't seem that resource hungry so far. The Flarum community seems much more friendly, DIY and open. Having to use PHP in 2023 is a little depressing, but it would pre…

> For example, if you have the money, there are a couple of options to convert your instance into a native app.

Honestly, if I was going to pay for a forum, I'd probably go with (self-hosted) XenForo from the start. It has the most polished user experience of any forum software I have seen. I understand people sell custom mobile apps for it, too, though I haven't really looked.

I thought using NodeBB with PostgreSQL was not recommended for production. Looks like I was wrong. Thanks for telling me.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#189

Post by rabuse »

nsonha wrote: post #186
archerx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see you’re just saying jt sucks just because the cargo cult says it sucks. Thanks for clarifying.

The cargo cult says it sucks AND I say it sucks. There is no “because”. Maybe if you’re better at logic you would be able to code languages other than PHP.

This reply is hilariously elitist.

Re: PhpBB 3.3.10

#190

Post by BlueTemplar »

Medox wrote: post #84
z57 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will be a day of days. imgur shutting down will be like someone shaking your internet Etch-A-Sketch. The internet post imgur will have a completely different vibe.

Sounds like a job for archive.org

Yeah, I was really impressed how they managed to get a large chunk of Xfire backed up with only 2 days warning before shutdown !

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Xfire

And that was for video too ! (Hopefully YouTube shutting down will give more warning... speaking of which, has anyone backed up Google Video before it shut down ? I have a collection of links in a forum post that would be nice to have back up and working again.)

Still, imgur is pretty big these days, this might be quite expensive (how do they stay afloat, BTW ?).

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