i started using the internet in the late 2000’s and still remember when you search for something most of the times it would return with a forum post … now its just random websites … if you ever need real and concise answer you have to add site:reddit.com at every search and since discord or twitter are not crawlable by these search crawlers they are not mentioned . Where did all those forums went…are there still active forums ?

  • anlumo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Isn’t lemmy basically that, but with modern technology? PHPBB was a nightmare for a sysadmin.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Not quite there yet, but I think Lemmy has the potential to be the best of both. Something you could host without a major company involved, but also attached to a wider community. It isn’t getting the critical mass just yet.

      Also, yeah, like a lot of PHP apps at the time, phpBB had some boneheaded decisions. Like “plugins” that didn’t use any kind of API hooks, and instead relied on patching the code directly.

      • saltynuts420@lemm.eeOP
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        1 year ago

        something is needed to be done to bring lemmy to the wider audience else this will also become one of those niche forum sites with the same 1 or 2k people

      • anlumo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Lemmy would have to fix federation first, until then it’s just modern forum software.

      • odbol@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s right there in the name: PHP

        Seriously though maintaining a PHP server is a security nightmare and you have to be constantly updating if you don’t want to be hacked. Just not worth it when there’s better options out there

      • anlumo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The software was so bad that if you didn’t keep up with emergency security fixes for even a week, the forum would instantly be taken over by someone. Being hacked was the natural state of that software.