How long have you been running forums?
- Thread starter Razasharp
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TPerry
Well-known member
pshah... Maximus and Binkley/2 & FidoNet FTW! Started with QuickBBS on an XT, progressed to dual node QuickBBS in DESQview and then advanced to OS/2 running 4 lines on Maximus/Binkley 2 combo doing Hub6000/Net 124 duties.
Forums (actual internet based) was when I registered my ride-texas.org domain in 6 years 4 months ago.
wedgar
Well-known member
pshah... Maximus and Binkley/2 & FidoNet FTW! Started with QuickBBS on an XT, progressed to dual node QuickBBS in DESQview and then advanced to OS/2 running 4 lines on Maximus/Binkley 2 combo doing Hub6000/Net 124 duties.
Forums (actual internet based) was when I registered my ride-texas.org domain in 6 years 4 months ago.
You've been around for a while.
My first domain was www.bfd.com. Ended up selling it some years ago when a fellow whose initials were bfd and wanted to buy it.
TPerry
Well-known member
Just for a "little" bit.You've been around for a while.
That one would be worth some BIG money now. I can think of another set of words it could work for and would be real popular.
wedgar
Well-known member
Just for a "little" bit.
That one would be worth some BIG money now. I can think of another set of words it could work for and would be real popular.
It was our local airport designator... Although some thought there had to be a more nefarious reason behind it.
Sold it for $5,000 back then.
dvsDave
Well-known member
Started with PHPNuke (anyone remember Chris, who ran NukeCops? He helped me out a lot in the beginning), went to phpBB with a drupal CMS frontend, then went to vBulletin 3 -> 4, and migrated to Xenforo in September. Although I've been a member of xF almost since the day it was announced, we had to wait for a wiki with auto-linking (we went with vaultwiki, but would much prefer to see @Jaxel 's wiki to get auto-linking) to come along before we could migrate.
I'm still in the middle of revamping our front page and footer, but I'll eventually get around to posting in the Forum Showcase.
I'm still in the middle of revamping our front page and footer, but I'll eventually get around to posting in the Forum Showcase.
D.O.A.
Well-known member
I started a vb3 forum for a small group of banned users/exiles including myself, from another forum in 2008, thinking it would be cool to still be able to post together and do what we do best. Somehow we were still going when xenforo was released and we jumped in, spent the court case period consoling older members who thought we were now facebook all of a sudden and what the hell is this slidy thing I have to log into. This month we should see the 90,000th member register so basically for the last 6 years I've been saying wtf a lot. It reminds me of a joke, a man walks into a bar with a frog on his head, the barman says, "what's that" and the frog says "I dunno it started as a pimple on my ass".
petertdavis
Well-known member
Got my start running my own in 2001, but was member of numerous boards for quite a few years prior to that.
rainmotorsports
Well-known member
My first forum was probably around 2005. It was software support forum for a developer I was helping improve his product. Simple Machines Forums... lol. I quit web development altogether a couple of years later.
I joined True Born Gaming as a member 2 or 3 years ago and was promoted to manage the game servers after helping them setup the CS:GO beta servers. But I turned around and decided I was taking over the website. Mainly was just maintaining the vBulletin install. Had to start developing around new issues when we finally decided to come to Xenforo.
As an experienced software developer with former web development experience I really want to get back into this. I studied C++ to try and make the jump from Delphi Pascal. But my lazy self would rather code in a language I am comfortable with. Developing for Xenforo requires me to push myself out of that comfort zone and really learn PHP.
So I think I am going to end up in this world as a software developer rather than a community developer. I had bought some domains and intended to build a community around teaching programming. People through the years have begged me to teach and in classes I spent more time helping other students than doing my own projects. But I also never saw myself as A teacher on the site, and the people I had hoped to get it off the ground with were never there. It's difficult to unlearn bad habits and I never wanted to contribute to any of those bad habits. When Codecadamey popped up I was very happy to see a site doing exactly what needed to be done. On a basic level almost anyone can learn to write something. There are a few concepts that once grasped will change your view on software forever.
I joined True Born Gaming as a member 2 or 3 years ago and was promoted to manage the game servers after helping them setup the CS:GO beta servers. But I turned around and decided I was taking over the website. Mainly was just maintaining the vBulletin install. Had to start developing around new issues when we finally decided to come to Xenforo.
As an experienced software developer with former web development experience I really want to get back into this. I studied C++ to try and make the jump from Delphi Pascal. But my lazy self would rather code in a language I am comfortable with. Developing for Xenforo requires me to push myself out of that comfort zone and really learn PHP.
So I think I am going to end up in this world as a software developer rather than a community developer. I had bought some domains and intended to build a community around teaching programming. People through the years have begged me to teach and in classes I spent more time helping other students than doing my own projects. But I also never saw myself as A teacher on the site, and the people I had hoped to get it off the ground with were never there. It's difficult to unlearn bad habits and I never wanted to contribute to any of those bad habits. When Codecadamey popped up I was very happy to see a site doing exactly what needed to be done. On a basic level almost anyone can learn to write something. There are a few concepts that once grasped will change your view on software forever.
craigiri
Well-known member
Heck, if we want to go back further, we had CB (pirate channel) and Ham "forums" - starting in about 1972!
Before that I lived in a commune.....we had forums.....(live!)
I started my big web site (hearth.com) in 1995 after having been online since 1986 (compuserve), but there wasn't really much in the way of decent (web) forum software until a few years later, so the sites used guestbooks, email lists, comments, and stuff like that as opposed to forums....
In about 1999 we moved to a real piece of forum software called ceilidh:
http://web.archive.org/web/20001109101500/http://www.hearth.com/ceilidh/ceilidh.html
In 2003 we moved to pmachine which was upgraded to EE (same company) - Expression Engine Forums.
We moved to XF only about 2 1/2 years ago.
As a really neat piece of history, some of my good friends from the old hippie commune started the first "real" forums that are credited (by Wired Mag and many others) for setting the modern standard(s). This was in 1985 and was called "The Well". I have recently started giving some presentations about how this all happened - and have the slides online if anyone is interested. The note are separate - some of the slides may not make sense without them...
http://www.craigsfire.com/communes-communications-and-community/
Please let me know what you think of the slides, etc. - I'm giving it to a big audience in July, but will fix it up a bit before I do.
(note - this stuff is for those who like history and happenstance.....I happen to be a history geek!)
Enclosed cover from Wired 1997 - guys on the ends are my friends from the commune, the middle guys are Larry Brilliant (google.org, Seva, EFF and more), and Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog and more).
Before that I lived in a commune.....we had forums.....(live!)
I started my big web site (hearth.com) in 1995 after having been online since 1986 (compuserve), but there wasn't really much in the way of decent (web) forum software until a few years later, so the sites used guestbooks, email lists, comments, and stuff like that as opposed to forums....
In about 1999 we moved to a real piece of forum software called ceilidh:
http://web.archive.org/web/20001109101500/http://www.hearth.com/ceilidh/ceilidh.html
In 2003 we moved to pmachine which was upgraded to EE (same company) - Expression Engine Forums.
We moved to XF only about 2 1/2 years ago.
As a really neat piece of history, some of my good friends from the old hippie commune started the first "real" forums that are credited (by Wired Mag and many others) for setting the modern standard(s). This was in 1985 and was called "The Well". I have recently started giving some presentations about how this all happened - and have the slides online if anyone is interested. The note are separate - some of the slides may not make sense without them...
http://www.craigsfire.com/communes-communications-and-community/
Please let me know what you think of the slides, etc. - I'm giving it to a big audience in July, but will fix it up a bit before I do.
(note - this stuff is for those who like history and happenstance.....I happen to be a history geek!)
Enclosed cover from Wired 1997 - guys on the ends are my friends from the commune, the middle guys are Larry Brilliant (google.org, Seva, EFF and more), and Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog and more).
FredC
Well-known member
wow im one of the new kids on the block establishing my first and still active community in 2008 on IPfree ..
Eventually migrated to IPB 2.3 or something.. (all i really recall is the 3.0 launch being close to becoming a reality.
But moved to vB 3.8.0 beta1 (what timing) as i recall that was right in the ballpark of when IB took over the reigns..
After about a year running up the 3.8 chain I jumped on the 4.0 train pretty early.. And the whole thing was a tragic nightmare... After being stuck with vB and 4.0 for around another year until i got wind of XF..
I was hooked 5 minutes after i registered my account here... Bought a XF license almost as soon as they went on sale and the rest is as they say, history....
Eventually migrated to IPB 2.3 or something.. (all i really recall is the 3.0 launch being close to becoming a reality.
But moved to vB 3.8.0 beta1 (what timing) as i recall that was right in the ballpark of when IB took over the reigns..
After about a year running up the 3.8 chain I jumped on the 4.0 train pretty early.. And the whole thing was a tragic nightmare... After being stuck with vB and 4.0 for around another year until i got wind of XF..
I was hooked 5 minutes after i registered my account here... Bought a XF license almost as soon as they went on sale and the rest is as they say, history....
Ran various free hosted forums since early 2000's but only got serious in 2010 when launching a fansite for a MMO game. That website is prisoner to vbulletin 4.x due to various plugins used on it that don't exist on XF, otherwise I would have migrated that to XF nearly 2 years ago.
Currently working on a new forum that is XF based, taking it slow and not in any particular hurry to get it launched, doing it more for the fun of it.
Currently working on a new forum that is XF based, taking it slow and not in any particular hurry to get it launched, doing it more for the fun of it.
woei
Well-known member
Going strong since 2000 
Had a very active community with vb3 but my career went first and lost some interest in the well being of the forums. Now I'm trying to reboot it all into the active community it was in the past, but that's quite hard. According to Google Analytics I have reached my 100 million pages served trophy . I started measuring about 2006 with Analytics.
Had a very active community with vb3 but my career went first and lost some interest in the well being of the forums. Now I'm trying to reboot it all into the active community it was in the past, but that's quite hard. According to Google Analytics I have reached my 100 million pages served trophy . I started measuring about 2006 with Analytics.
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