Whether owning one or just being a member?
I didn't really do forums until 2005. When I had my first forum 15 years ago, I was on several others for health as well as a variety of topics that were of interest to me at that time. I had gotten out of forums after. A few years ago I tried Facebook & Mewe but honestly didn’t care for the format & missed the community of forums. Had my forum for 2 years & been on a lot of forums since 🙂
I was the same my first forum was in 2004 with a good friend with both having the same interests, later eventually shutdown due to competition within the same niche we was in but we did have a good run back then 🙂 over the years i have lost count how many forums i have been on that range from many niches and my list of forums to visit and return to visit is still growing 🙂
Since 2004 when I first found and joined one. Never taken a break from them but I have come close a few times to just wanting to walk away from the whole scene.
The first forum I joined, was a flat database forum, for an online text based, MMORPG, was when I was sometime around the age of 9 or 10. Oddly enough, child privacy laws wasn't as much enforced then, as it is now. Didn't run into that issue, until one of my brothers decided that he wanted his own site to host his flash animations he was making at the time. That is when I first came across ProBoards, and learned about California's COPPA Act, which was later enforced by the U.S. Federal. So, that would make it around 1998 when I first started using forums.
I've been on forums since 2006, the first one I ever joined was a Pokemon one. (Glitch City, a website dedicated to documenting the numerous glitches found in the Pokemon series of games.) I wasn't active that much however, since I didn't have a reliable internet connection at home so I didn't really get into forums full on until the end of 2008.
2002. That's when I started doing web design. Then did forum management, more web design, now more SEO and online marketing. Forums are still cool though 😀
I can't remember the exact month or year, but it was around 2009-2010 when I start using forums. I never actually signed up for them until probably around 2011. I used to browse a lot as a guest on multiple forums related to gaming or Apple
Back then, PhpBB was the forum software to use. You had to hand code a plugin in. It may or may not break your forum. It would usually take 3 to 6 hours to add a plugin. LOL.
Just 20 years here. And I second Shawn, phpBB was the deal. Started with php nuke, then moved to phpBB. Then fancier stuff like myBB, IPB, VB. Jeez, I feel old 😀
I joined hubpages in 2010, hubpages had a forum for in-house writers and I started with hubpages foum. In 2013, I joined an indie forum that paid for posting, the forum helped me discover a lot of forums including postloop and the forum wheel.
I have been on forums and also running forums since around 2004 so I would say around 19 years I have had involvement in forums either as an admin/owner or moderator or as a member.
