Ever made your own forum? How did it go?

[Zerpina]

Ya and a guy bought it from me, changed the name from Cornhub though...

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

You couldn't pay me to do it again, though.

Having to understand phpBB, SMF, vBulletin, ZB, InvisionFree, TapaTalk and now XenForo, too? Learning how to do database backups? To find my way around drastically different admin panels? No, thanks.

A younger me loved the experience, but that's why I'm no longer him. I don't enjoy fighting battles I don't earn anything by winning anymore.

 

[ciro64]

I want to try to create my own forum engine from scratch sometime in the near future. Something simple that's more close to this than what you're seeing now. It's still gonna require some work and discipline though, but as a reward I won't have to deal with arbitrarily limitations beyond my control. Rather, I'd have to deal with problems I created myself!

I want to make a small place, that's loose on the rules but restrictive on what kind of people get to stay.

 

[Spike's iconSpike]

Several times.
But things changed dramatically from the early 2000's.
Nowadays people are much more defiant of authority, cannot follow simple rules.
And when they face the consequences resort to violence.
It's very bizarre.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Several times.
But things changed dramatically from the early 2000's.
Nowadays people are much more defiant of authority, cannot follow simple rules.
And when they face the consequences resort to violence.
It's very bizarre.

I'll never forget someone's farewell message stating that they were leaving because forums (and their people) had become too wild and impossible to police, that rules were now being seen as mere "suggestions" and that there was no more etiquette.

This was in 2007.

 

[ciro64]

I want to try to create my own forum engine from scratch sometime in the near future. Something simple that's more close to this than what you're seeing now. It's still gonna require some work and discipline though, but as a reward I won't have to deal with arbitrarily limitations beyond my control. Rather, I'd have to deal with problems I created myself!

Started working on this since yesterday, made some good progress.

Also wow, ChatGPT is busted. It can write a BBCode parser with such ease.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

One very interesting aspect of one of my earlier attempts was that we appointed a couple of 13-year-olds as moderators... And by golly, they were excellent at their job! One in particular peformed so well that they were very hard to replace once they left a few years later.

 

[ciro64]

@Waffles since you moderated so many forums... have you ever AJAX Chat before? It's quite nostalgic to me.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

@Waffles since you moderated so many forums... have you ever AJAX Chat before? It's quite nostalgic to me.

View attachment 87820

That does look familiar, but I think it may have been used in passing and was not something we actually embraced.

 

[ciro64]

That does look familiar, but I think it may have been used in passing and was not something we actually embraced.

Ah, I see. A forum I frequented once, which used one of those services you could create a forum for free, came with that chat.

It's a very outdated solution nowadays though. My project will use the websockets spec which is modern and simpler to use.

Also, as a means of keeping it simple and oldschool, but also by design: members won't be able to see the previous content of the conversation before loading the page. You wanna chat, you gotta be present at the moment

 

[Lena CE]

I didn't make it but I was the 3rd user on a PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale forum and part of the admin team back in high school. Forum served its purpose and I made a lot of friends, though I didn't stay in touch with any of them long-term. Was great fun to be a member of that community for a couple years and even after the forum died I still checked back in frequently for the sake of nostalgia. Was very sad when it got suddenly shut off after a long bout of silence from the creator. Same thing happened with The Dissidia Forum :(

 

[Bluewyne]

One very interesting aspect of one of my earlier attempts was that we appointed a couple of 13-year-olds as moderators... And by golly, they were excellent at their job! One in particular peformed so well that they were very hard to replace once they left a few years later.

It's weird, I was a 13 year old moderator on handfuls of forums, but I would never consider appointing a 13 year old as a moderator on any of my Discords now...

 

[Lena CE]

One very interesting aspect of one of my earlier attempts was that we appointed a couple of 13-year-olds as moderators... And by golly, they were excellent at their job! One in particular peformed so well that they were very hard to replace once they left a few years later.

This is so wild. I remember as a kid wanting to be a mod soooo bad on forums I frequented but I woulda never entrusted me with such power lol

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

This is so wild. I remember as a kid wanting to be a mod soooo bad on forums I frequented but I woulda never entrusted me with such power lol

OMG, me too XD

It was like the ultimate status symbol lol.

 

[medisinn]

I had several forums back in the day, and I was admin on at least one that a friend ran. They never amounted to much, the posters were just people we already knew that were friends and/or posted on the bigger forums we frequented. It was just fun I guess, and free too, kinda like having a Geocities or Angelfire site back in the day. We had no hook, no reason that a random person would join the forum or stay. I certainly had no knowledge of SEO or any ability to code anything. The forum most of us came from, Fated Circle, had lots of RPG Maker resources, so people would initially visit due to that and then maybe stay and settle in on the forums. No different than here really. I think that helps, there will always be disagreements and differences but at least there is one thing in common that everyone has, being whatever the theme of the site is.