I'm a member of at least half a dozen phpBB forums right now. They do still exist. Even if Reddit is more popular, remember that forums in 1998 didn't have millions of members either.
I still run 4 different web forums, and they still get a bunch of traffic. They all used to be phpBB back in the day, but all were migrated to Discourse a long time ago.
Has everyone forgotten about phpbb? (Or whatever the slightly more modern forum software is…) Historically forums are the most successful small social networks.
I was not aware that phpbb forums disappeared; I regularly read three of them that are all quite active. Yes, there are subreddit counterparts, but the reddit versions are mostly filled with crappy karma-seeking memes and wildly off-topic discussions.
The phpbb forums tend to be a lot more ruthless in self-moderation and probably a fair amount of gatekeeping too. But the content is significantly better than reddit, which I believe is a source of pride for many of the participants. I also get the impression that there is a growing sense of “coolness” using a crappy outdated UX. I predict the return and rise of the niche community sites will happen before its total disappearance.
I still run a couple of fairly popular forums which I setup coming on nearly 15 years ago now. All powered by phpBB and recently Flarum was used for the latest site.
There's still demand there for smaller communities and while some members have dropped off over the years it's still the most popular way to keep in touch with the latest happenings, none of the other social networks really took any of the traffic away.
I'd love to see more spring up - for me there's always more of a community feel, you get to know the regulars and everyone is there for that specific topic.
It's a little clunky these days but it's still a great piece of forum software.
Maybe it's just my experience. Every phpbb community I was part of moved years away to Facebook, Reddit or (now) Discord. Some of the forums linger on, almost completely deserted by their former users :/
This has made me super nostalgic, thanks for sharing this!
I definitely look fondly back on the days of the old phpBB forums. So much knowledge shared freely and without any motive other than sharing knowledge and wisdom with their community.
Of course I’m a biased since those were my teenage years and the world in your teenage years is always the best lol.
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