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PhpBB

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Re: PhpBB

#31

Post by mostlysimilar »

burntsushi wrote: post #24
thiscatis wrote: post #4

Modding phpBB and starting new forums using phpBB (and later Invision Community) got me into php dev and basically the job and career I now have. Such a great product for building communities. It would be so good having this feeling again browsing forums on this software. The Subsilver theme was iconic and legendary.

Same. But for vBulletin. I then went on to build my own forum software (because who didn't?): http://web.archive.org/web/20040523030817/http://www.webtric...

Same here! Originally phpBB, then IPB 1.3, then vBulletin. Good times. :)

I was entirely obsessed with this space when I was a teenager/young adult. I would search out and try every forum software I could get my hands on, and of course (because who didn't) made my own.

Re: PhpBB

#32

Post by bunkerbewohner »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #10
lockhouse wrote: post #8

Honestly, at this point I think the post Reddit internet very well could be a return to lots of independent PhpBB powered forums and Discord groups. Unlike when Digg destroyed itself there just really isn’t a single heir apparent.

If a bunch of independent traditional forums was such a compelling experience, you have to ask yourself why Reddit was so successful despite them. The hay day of even large forums like Neogaf and SomethingAwful has also passed. The reality is that registering to N forums to discuss M topics isn't very compelling. And even a large forum with a diverse off-topic section can't compete with the long tails of Reddit subre…

One thing that’s different today is authentication options. Modern APIs (eg WebAuthn), Oauth, passkeys, WebID… Also password managers were not as ubiquitous as they are today.

I think there’s the potential to make using many different sites a lot more frictionless nowadays.

Maybe the only missing part would be an aggregator to keep track of the different communities.

Re: PhpBB

#33

Post by hpb42 »

neverminder wrote: post #11

Discourse is a good modern alternative.

I'd say that Discourse is an alternative, some people consider it good, but I personally don't like it.

What I like in PhpBB forums I joined is the organization of topics, usually hierarchical; balance of information density, not too high, not to low; good pagination that is fast to load; ctrl-f does what you expect: search in current page; theming that usually makes each forum look unique; profile and signature customization; no gamification of usage; and probably many other stuff I forgot.

Many of these things are personal and YMMV of course.

Re: PhpBB

#34

Post by thesuitonym »

burntsushi wrote: post #24
thiscatis wrote: post #4

Modding phpBB and starting new forums using phpBB (and later Invision Community) got me into php dev and basically the job and career I now have. Such a great product for building communities. It would be so good having this feeling again browsing forums on this software. The Subsilver theme was iconic and legendary.

Same. But for vBulletin. I then went on to build my own forum software (because who didn't?): http://web.archive.org/web/20040523030817/http://www.webtric...

God that is peak mid-00s design. Wonderful job, you hit me right in the nostalgia.

Re: PhpBB

#35

Post by coldpie »

65 wrote: post #9

I miss PhpBB. So much more well organized than Reddit or Discord or Instagram or Twitter. It feels like we've lost user experience sensibilities from the mid 2000s and now rely on algorithms and feeds to give us things we may or may not want. Hashtags and flair never made any real sense compared to threads and topics.

Forums are still around. Less popular, sure, and definitely a much smaller fraction of the entire online footprint. But if it's the experience you want, you can still get it. I've been on the Something Awful forums for almost 2 decades at this point, and there are definitely others.

Re: PhpBB

#36

Post by seydor »

Most people don't want to admit it, but running a subreddit is much more fun than running your own forum. Even if you magically had the users, you also have the FULL responsibility , up to the legal consequnces for the stuff that your users do, plus you have all the technical trouble.

Reddit gives that for free to moderators. They can make any community for shits n giggles, break it, fix it, abandon it etc. and none of the real-life consequences.

Re: PhpBB

#37

Post by dbbk »

Macha wrote: post #7
thiscatis wrote: post #4

Modding phpBB and starting new forums using phpBB (and later Invision Community) got me into php dev and basically the job and career I now have. Such a great product for building communities. It would be so good having this feeling again browsing forums on this software. The Subsilver theme was iconic and legendary.

The mods being distributed as manual diff application instructions and then auto mod installers became a thing. Also called all caps MODs to distinguish them from forum moderators.

This is the hardest nostalgia. I'd forgotten about the manual diff! I was doing this at 13 and was basically what got me started in PHP development in general.

Re: PhpBB

#38

Post by partiallypro »

lsiunsuex wrote: post #30
thiscatis wrote: post #4

Modding phpBB and starting new forums using phpBB (and later Invision Community) got me into php dev and basically the job and career I now have. Such a great product for building communities. It would be so good having this feeling again browsing forums on this software. The Subsilver theme was iconic and legendary.

Same - started using phpBB in 2000? 2001? Started my career in web development.

Same here, phpBB and vBulletin are basically what kick started my career, though I had built a ton of small static html sites before when I was in HS. I built a small but still pretty big community. I think the board ended with ~30k users, not all active, but still. I only just shut it down a few years ago. Reddit essentially killed it, and once I actually got a job it was harder to maintain my presence there and keep up with the personalities. Never made a dime from it, but it ended up being a solid investment.

I still have all of the files, etc, the database is a monster. So, I could theoretically put it back up. Took it from phpBB to vBulletin 3.6 to 4 to 5, so it was an older and long lasting. I remember setting it up my freshman year in college ('06) taking advantage of a protest of moderators on a different board (they were reading user's PMs). Some of my favorite internet memories came from internet forums. The thing I always hated about vB though is that even a minor update could cause part of a custom theme to break, and the CP felt dated, even in the early 2000s. Finding a theme template or option was so overly complicated.

Re: PhpBB

#39

Post by deanc »

burntsushi wrote: post #24
thiscatis wrote: post #4

Modding phpBB and starting new forums using phpBB (and later Invision Community) got me into php dev and basically the job and career I now have. Such a great product for building communities. It would be so good having this feeling again browsing forums on this software. The Subsilver theme was iconic and legendary.

Same. But for vBulletin. I then went on to build my own forum software (because who didn't?): http://web.archive.org/web/20040523030817/http://www.webtric...

Same. Used to moderate the official vbulletin.org with some good people. This got me started in my career and I would not be where I am today without all that time spent learning the internals of vBulletin. Of course, it's a shitshow nowadays after the company took it over and the majority of good people (including developers) created XenForo. I have not been involved for over a decade :)

Re: PhpBB

#40

Post by rpastuszak »

seydor wrote: post #36

Most people don't want to admit it, but running a subreddit is much more fun than running your own forum. Even if you magically had the users, you also have the FULL responsibility , up to the legal consequnces for the stuff that your users do, plus you have all the technical trouble. Reddit gives that for free to moderators. They can make any community for shits n giggles, break it, fix it, abandon it etc. and none…

Makes sense, although I've never considered that--the communities I modded via forums were so small / close-nit that we never had to worry about someone misbehaving. It was always "a friend of a friend" at most in terms of degrees of separation, so social pressures still applied.
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