Inb4 Anon buys the domain and turns it in a Threadiverse instance for the lulz

I am grateful that phwonline.com got a solid eulogy

Shame that Facepunch forums are gone

Glad we’ve always got Archive.org

Every few years I check in on an old message board I was active on between like 1999-2010. It's still there. Gets maybe 1-2 posts per year these days.

everynow and then, I log back in to GaiaOnline ( go-gaia if you're OG GD prommie).... see how it's doing....

Lets see what happend to gamespy

Those years line up well with SETI@home?

Isn't SETI dead now? Atleast you can not fetch ans New workunits in boinc.

Techreport.com 😢

I used post on a mobile phone forum called Lasyk, this was some time in 2004-2006...

The forum is long since dead and erased, but it was a huge forum with 100k members, subforums for just about any mobile phone made by mainstream manufacturers.

I remember managing to create a huge thread over on their misc forum, where I asked other users to post a screenshot of their desktop.

It just kept going, and I think it became a staple thread with 80-100 pages or so...

Seti@home is. SETI itself is still going but not nearly as popular as the screen saver was.

Those were the good days.

I typed in a random string of words in the early days and added “.com”, and I ended up on some forum some random guy in Texas hosted for him and his friends. I was obviously a decade younger than everyone else, but it was the best of the internet. We knew each other by name, the link sharing was top notch, civil conversations, no one was making money off of it.

Checked it recently and it’s been down for a long time. The internet archive caught one snapshot of it in time. I can see my username on the homepage like looking at my own gravestone.

how did people in the 2000s afford web servers and domains ?

it seemed like everyone had their own site, my idiot child mind thought that it must be free

Same for me, mine is https://skyscrapercity.com/ Still going strong, surprisingly!

Although looks like they've migrated from PhpBB to 'fora'?

Would you recommend it?

It wasn't that expensive if you used shared hosting.

it was free. Geocities was free. Domains were (still are mostly) cheap. For simple web hostings there were (and still are) lots of free options

not really. It's a shadow of itself at this point. The most noteworthy thing about it is the trivia knowledge that it sparked many research papers as a model of hyperinflation. But the forums themselves are dead. The minigames were entertaining at their inception, in the days of Shockwave games.... but nowdays... you'd be more entertained just pulling down Terraria or something

Not free, but not expensive either.

I don't remember them ever using phpBB? Need to check the Wayback Machine later

Now you could host a website on a pi zero if you wanted to. Well, you could if you make a proper website and don't just download every JS library you can find to add a button.

if I ever make a website again, it will still static with manually coded html. I don't know js, I can only remember some css. Maybe I'll put some spinning 3d buttons gifs for fun.

My niche forum split off from a comic about RPG games, eventually they moved to a FB group to keep contact but I stopped using FB. I dreamt about them a few nights ago, I miss the community we had.

I do miss forum culture; large chunks of digital history have been erased as forums vanished.

Culture on the web has changed as well; it has moved from communication with elements of performance, to performance with the illusion of communication.

There's still some good forums about.

I used to use MDOCUK.co.uk when I had my L400.

Now I use sprinter-source.com for my van

Handy for mechanical tips etc

The forums for the first silk road was pretty fun too

Vizzed Board, those were the days 😭

I could go, but... Would I dare gaze upon the visage of my most teenage self?

RIP old school game shark forums

It was unfortunate watching our forum die. It was a pretty busy space, lots of gaming info, participation and all that. The main damage was caused by our preferred game series studio killing private servers and mods with the next version of the game in favor of dev company paid servers with limitied and company approved mods. Pretty soon the seconday games we played followed suit. That caused a lot of the group to look for other games to play, modding was what we were all about. The forums were a lot of fun. A lot of people learning how to use the graphical tools for games and personlize their forum presence. I just looked at the wayback machine and it was a real blast from the past seeing all the names, all the servers, the activity…it was a good 5-8 years of my life.

I have used PHP as well for some but mostly stuff like display all the PNGs in this folder on this page. So that changing images in future if they provide updated ones is really easy. They usually loved that idea but most would rarely provided any. But for me it was fun to learn some PHP.

The rest was HTML/CSS. Maybe a very tiny bit of JS.

Anyone remember BIGmog?

Did you use to visit too?

I discovered that site in 2009 or so, but don't remember opening an account or regularly following it, though I did occasionally find links to it elsewhere.

I've meanwhile checked and it seems they used to use vBulletin, not phpBB.

that's a fantastic way to characterize the the 2020s internet.

it also increasing feelings like that's bleeding into real life, especially if you listen to how everyone wants to socialize but it feels like they can't ever be honest or themselves because everyone expects a performance, which is also something I have noticed myself. The way people interact face to face has changed since the 2010s.

they cost like 10-20 bucks a month to run. i used to run a hosted website and it was like 5 bucks a month.

If you don't cringe you haven't improved. I have to chant that when I look at anything I wrote when I was younger.

I've documented exploits like you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships that clip through space in Masters of Orion. I watched the six hidden cutscenes in Baldur's Gate. All those moments will be lost in time...

Time to die.

I've been keeping a list of interesting niche websites I've found since around 2018, and it's been sad seeing them gradually go offline and disappear into the void.

I see. Yeah I used to read it for roads trivia

old forums i use are still around and active.

the users are all like 50-60 though. nobody under 50 uses them and nobody under 30 even knows what a 'internet forum' is.

do it, coward

gamefaqs walkthroughs

In an interesting perspective, We're experiencing the first wave of collective library being attacked and distorted by ai. A collective history of digital art and entertainment throughout 5 decades or more.

Will we collectively preserve it or just join the ai wave?

Ironically, even current nostalgic trend is triggered by ai too.

Also would be funny if after all this is gone, there is only this last obelisk standing somewhere in the desert with dickbutt on it.

We are on a modern Internet forum right now though. It just works a little differently.

There was this forum I used for a decade. It was a support group for a few specific related medical conditions (I will lie if you ask. It was the fatal butt disease. The condition isn't the important part), and after a couple years as a user they made me moderator over a small subforum (like fifteen of us were in the smaller group) for a medical research group. They were some of the closest friends I've ever made.

I'm the only person still alive in the research group (benefits of getting sick young I guess) and the last time I checked the forum, the latest post was ten months old. I owe them confidentiality, but with día de los muertos coming up I find my mind lingering on them more than usual.

Every article that has resonated with me, had a clever turn of phrase, good artwork, whatever. I used to bookmark every single one (I have a process for my [recipes to try] bookmarks. Once I try them, if they're good I type them out in a text editor and save them on my computer. Then I move the bookmarks I've tried to either [yeh] or [bleh] subdirectories. Just as an example.) but like, seeing half of my old favorite recipes disappear because of website redesigns? That hurts me in my heart and, more importantly, stomach.

When I think about those old forum friends, the ones I've lost touch with (or worse, just lost), I like to listen to this song. also singshouting I'm doing this for revenge with 3,000 other people is one hell of an experience

Wait, hidden cutscenes in Baldur's Gate?

it was never preserved and never was going to be preserved.

all of history is curation, most everything that was 'created' is lost, because it's not significant or relevant.

I'm just riffing off the original lines.