5 replies to this topic

[AWS]

I'm sure you all heard about it. Ultimate Bulletin Board, The forum software that started it all. Before it all you had was threaded discussions software like Matt Wrights wwwboard. UBB started the forum revelution and if not for a few boneheaded decisions by Infopop would still today be the defacto community forum software. There would be no vBulletin and hence no xenForo. IPB might still be Ikonboard. phpBB, myBB, UseBB or any other vbulletin free alternative wouldn't be here.

You'd probably still have wwwthreads and phorum since they were there in the early days as threaded discussion forums.

Why look back at the history of community forum software?

Last night I booted up my very first dedicated server. I am getting ready to sell some of my old stuff and want to wipe the drives. I have a collection of servers that I replaced with newer over the years This server was state of the art back in 1998. It was an Intel dual slot 1 Xeon 500Mhz 4U server. It had 4 18gig scsi drives on a Mylex controller configured in raid 5. 2 gigs of registered memory. A true top of the line server. It had Redhat 6 installed as the OS.

So I booted it up. As I was looking through the public html dir I saw my very first site which had a forum. I assigned an IP on my network to the server and browsed to the site. There was the very first version of Extreme VB Visual Basic Forum in all it's glory running on UBB version 4.5. After a trip down memory lane I wiped the drives. I sold that forum 7 years ago when it was at it's peak. Also on that server was another of my sites, an upstart, http://www.resource-zone.com, which is still online which was running wwwthreads at the time.

I then went to Google and did a search for Powered by UBB Classic. What did I find? 345,000 results. I browsed a few of the results going through about 3 pages. I was amazed to find that not only are there still a number of UBB forums online many of them are huge and still popular. Just goes to show you if you have a popular forum it doesn't matter what forum software you use.

Well that's my trip down memory lane. How many of you ran or where a member of a UBB forum?

[Sunsettommy]

I have been interested in UBB.threads.But was going to wait for their 8.0 version.That was going to be a complete rewrite.But that project is on hold.Because Rick Baker has left the group.He is no longer a developer.

There are a couple of forum software even older than UBB.One you mentioned and the oldest is WIT.

Here is a nice chart of the main softwares and their starting dates.Some died away and others continued as a fork.

LINK

Phorum is the oldest free forum still running.Ikonboard is still running.

IPB is a fork from Ikonboard.

Enjoy.

[Riess]

I remember visiting exactly one forum that is running UBB even today.

[Gaza]

Not as old, but you can still find many vBulletin 2 forums out there. Hell, I even know of one phpBB2 forum still going from ages ago when I used to use the place. Amazing really how some just stick with it, even after all these years. Community owners always hype on about having to upgrade your forum to keep with the times, yet they break the mould on that one. You can find some old forums still very active using vB 2.

Many of them might not be active anymore I know off out there, but it's not down to the old forum software they still use. I know that for sure with the phpBB2 one in question, that forum would still be just as active today was it not for some unfortunate things that happened years back. They closed their Teamspeak channel and stopped the game server they ran. After that the forum died fast!

Edited by mrgtb, 20 February 2012 - 07:54 PM.

[Riess]

In my country there is phpBB2 "premod" that is actually still quite popular despite being based on phpBB2 code and look.

I also know there are some big companies running their forums on it, like Egosoft.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

I'm only a member of one UBB, and that is UBB Central.

Speaking of older versions of software... that discussion doesn't get very far without bringing up the Something Awful forums. Still running on a heavily (I mean... heavily) modified vBulletin 2.2.9.

At work, we still get upgrade requests for IPB 2.x, and even the occasional 1.x.

Edited by Ryan Ashbrook, 21 February 2012 - 10:22 AM.