Lost forum softwares

[Lord Saru]

What are some of the forum softwares that we have lost due to competition and other issues?

I think, some of them are still around, but mostly, the market has been stagnant with no new product coming together.

Whats your opinion?

 

[The Cat Lady]

Zetaboards was a favorite of mine until it was bought out by Tapatalk. I no longer recommend them now.

 

[Bryn]

Zetaboards was a favorite of mine until it was bought out by Tapatalk. I no longer recommend them now.

Was about to say the exact same thing...

 

[TPerry]

Sadly... if software cannot progress, it will die.
It's a sad fact of reality. And we still have currently some paid software script offerings that the developers apparently have not realized that. 😵
In the mean time... hosting costs are not that high, either shared or even intro level VPS offerings. So if you cannot afford to grab one and run a self hosted site, maybe it's time for a new interest? And yes, that may sound harsh... but many times reality is.

 

[Smokey]

hailBoards was a great fork of phpBB2 back in the day, hailBoards 2.0 was supposed to run on phpBB3 code but the project died before it got to that point.

 

[Ravenfreak]

FluxBB is no longer around. It was a fork of PunBB, but eventually was ditched for Flarum. I liked PunBB better anyways, but that hasn't been updated in 4 years almost.

 

[Cam]

You could go down the rabbit hole of talking about all of the different free forum hosts that had their own modified software, Zetaboards being one of them. FreeForums.org was another big one back then. Talking about stand alone software, there's a lot that has disappeared, or just hasn't been updated in so many years, where it is now basically extinct. YaBB is something that comes to mind. ProBoards actually used the YaBB software at one point in time.

 

[Ravenfreak]

YaBB is something that comes to mind.

YaBB is still around actually! Sure there's not too many new updates to the software but it's not completely abandoned like FluxBB. The last update was made back in November of last year. Here's a link to download the software if you all want to try it out. It's written in Perl and not php btw.

Yet another Bulletin Board (YaBB)

Download Yet another Bulletin Board (YaBB) for free. Free forum software. YaBB is a FREE Perl forum (bulletin board) system that has rivaled professional message boards for years. YaBB provides chat for visitors where they can post any time and reply to anyone!

sourceforge.net

 

[coolguy]

Phorum, MiniBB, XMB, ElkArte, and tangobb. I found all of them on softaculous. There are more. https://www.softaculous.com/apps/forums

 

[dojo]

YaBB, oh my, am too old. I know all the ones you are mentioning here 😀 Used to love PhpBB, it's actually the first forum script I heavily modded and themed. I see they have updates, but it still looks like in 2005 😀

 

[Ravenfreak]

Phorum, MiniBB, XMB, ElkArte, and tangobb. I found all of them on softaculous. There are more. https://www.softaculous.com/apps/forums

Elkearte is still being worked on I believe. Phorum isn't, however XMB just recently got a brand new update on the 19th of this month!

XMB Forum Software

Forum Software Scripts from XMB2 using PHP and MySQL, translations, themes, modifications, and general support.

www.xmbforum2.com

 

[Matthew2D]

I've been trying to find this old forum software. I believe its still up. I was called like abxd3d or something like that. It had a neon theme and it looked like old school HTML web pages.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I've been trying to find this old forum software. I believe its still up. I was called like abxd3d or something like that. It had a neon theme and it looked like old school HTML web pages.

Could it be Acmlm Board XD? There's a newer version of the software that Xkeeper, the founder of The Cutting Room Floor (and who once worked on my favorite Sonic forum, Sonic Retro) helps to maintain. It's called Jul.

GitHub - Xkeeper0/jul: jul - maintenance upgrades to a forum system from 2001

jul - maintenance upgrades to a forum system from 2001 - Xkeeper0/jul

github.com

 

[Smokey]

Elkearte is still being worked on I believe. Phorum isn't, however XMB just recently got a brand new update on the 19th of this month!

XMB Forum Software

Forum Software Scripts from XMB2 using PHP and MySQL, translations, themes, modifications, and general support.

www.xmbforum2.com

Holy crap that's awesome. I remember trying out XMB back in the day.

 

[Matthew2D]

Could it be Acmlm Board XD? There's a newer version of the software that Xkeeper, the founder of The Cutting Room Floor (and who once worked on my favorite Sonic forum, Sonic Retro) helps to maintain. It's called Jul.

GitHub - Xkeeper0/jul: jul - maintenance upgrades to a forum system from 2001

jul - maintenance upgrades to a forum system from 2001 - Xkeeper0/jul

github.com

THATS IT! I actually found it before seeing this. But yeah that brings back memories.

 

[Ghost]

Yeah unfortunately a few forum software companies have been lost to our memories. It's sad because as more time goes on, there are less and less records of them even existing.


SMF has been around for ages

Home of Open Source Free Forum Community Software

Free Open Source Forum Software

www.simplemachines.org

Discuz:

Discuz！官方网站 - 开放、连接、共赢

Discuz! 平台，由一群高擎互联网人在倾情支持， 他们来自于腾讯 Discuz! 创业团队成员以及优秀的开发者。在中国互联网风云变迁中，Discuz! 20多年间为300万企业及站长赋能，秉承“开放、连接、共赢”的精神，倡导与生态伙伴及开发者共建健康可持续的 Discuz! 品牌合作模式，突破需求、连接和信任的局限，保持创新活力，无论是在企业内部交流社区，企业在连接 To C 发展积极贡献。

www.discuz.vip

Another company 'Discusware' (NOT Discus) is almost extinct:

https://perlwatch.net/projects/forums/Discusware/

• their download link is a 404
• can't find a copy anywhere for the free version

Here's a good write-up on vBulletin's lite version:

Reviving 20 year old web forum software | Virtually Fun

virtuallyfun.com

 

[Ravenfreak]

Yeah unfortunately a few forum software companies have been lost to our memories. It's sad because as more time goes on, there are less and less records of them even existing.


SMF has been around for ages

Home of Open Source Free Forum Community Software

Free Open Source Forum Software

www.simplemachines.org

Discuz:

Discuz！官方网站 - 开放、连接、共赢

Discuz! 平台，由一群高擎互联网人在倾情支持， 他们来自于腾讯 Discuz! 创业团队成员以及优秀的开发者。在中国互联网风云变迁中，Discuz! 20多年间为300万企业及站长赋能，秉承“开放、连接、共赢”的精神，倡导与生态伙伴及开发者共建健康可持续的 Discuz! 品牌合作模式，突破需求、连接和信任的局限，保持创新活力，无论是在企业内部交流社区，企业在连接 To C 发展积极贡献。

www.discuz.vip

Another company 'Discusware' (NOT Discus) is almost extinct:

https://perlwatch.net/projects/forums/Discusware/

• their download link is a 404
• can't find a copy anywhere for the free version

Here's a good write-up on vBulletin's lite version:

Reviving 20 year old web forum software | Virtually Fun

virtuallyfun.com

Wow look at that old version of vBulletin! Thank you for sharing the link to the Perl resource center, it's a shame a good number of those forum scripts are no longer online. 🙁

 

[Ghost]

Wow look at that old version of vBulletin! Thank you for sharing the link to the Perl resource center, it's a shame a good number of those forum scripts are no longer online. 🙁

Yeah, I knew there was a decline, but didn't realize they would disappear. i've already backed up a few and have a local install of Vbulletin Lite Free version upgraded to PHP 8.3 w/ modern mysql, docker, etc. lol - I am maintaining the look & feel 100% though.

Has some errors, paused on that side project today

vBulletin suffered when a few core devs left for XenForo & vB outsourced devs.

 

[fantanoice]

Big RIP to Zetaboards and Invisionfree before that. The first forums I ever joined were on Ezboard which was a hell of a long time ago. They all got bought out by Tapatalk - who also wiped all record of these old sites from Internet Archive, the monsters!

 

[Ravenfreak]

Big RIP to Zetaboards and Invisionfree before that. The first forums I ever joined were on Ezboard which was a hell of a long time ago. They all got bought out by Tapatalk - who also wiped all record of these old sites from Internet Archive, the monsters!

Yeah taptalk sucks, I remember people talking about EZboard. I wasn't online then so I never joined any forum hosted on EZboard lol. There were a few Sonic forums hosted on the platform back in the day.