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How did phpbb go from the biggest forum platform on the block to relative obscurity?
user3028938
Member
I am guessing it is because they refused to change their style to update with the times and stuck with the old school no frills look, which is exactly what I like about it.
I dislike the social media inspired forums with all the reactions and engagement and modern themes.
Hmm I guess that to survive forums had to update with the times to appeal to the gen z's or whatever they are called now who have grown up on social media.
Even so forums are mostly dead aren't they with social media groups and the like absorbing the majority of subjects which would have been on forums.
Mid naughties were the glory days of forums!
Comments
Yes I also miss a good community, forums were awesome. I refuse to use social media I don't have it
Yeah I miss the popularity of forums. Those were the good old days.
I miss smf and mybb
Social Media (Facebook, Reddit, Twitter) and the retardation of youth (Short tik-tok videos, memes, doesn't want to read more than a few sentences at a time) has led to the downfall of many great communities.
The technical communities that still rely on forums are generally using more modern UI platforms that have a different feel than older traditional forums like SMF, phpBB, YaBB, etc.
It's just the evolution of the internet. These places still exist, just like IRC still exists and BBS still exist, they've just lost popularity for more modern alternatives is all.
I like how the archlinux forums have stuck to their roots with a super simple forum style however there was a schism there with the plans to update to something flashy and new just because of get with the times, with some welcoming the change with others vehemently resisting it.
Linuxquestions is another good old school forum with mature users mainly.
The forum software they use is long EOL and not maintained for years, different issue imo
Its time is over. Everything is passing.
the best forum was PCBoard connected to Rime and fidonet, and robomail qwk reader. what is this phpbb?
IMO, for phpBB specifically,it's due to the rise of social media. The kind of smaller groups/communities that used to use phpBB, SMF, etc. now use things like Discord or Reddit. Free and minimal effort required compared to running your own forum.
Do you miss them? SMF recently launched new versions and they still work around.. Never saw something like that from SMF...
https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=592035.0 - 2.1.5 released (June 24, 2025)
Last one (June 26, 2025)
https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=592074.0
And 2.1.7 is not soo long, if someone contribute for this project:
https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF/milestones
Over the years, SMF has been a very active forum in terms of progress and with many corrections. Some took a while, but they remain active and continue to improve. The themes don't attract much attention because they are not as modern as Xenforo for the new generation. But it still has a good foundation, support, hooks, and the like.
The only thing I don't like very much is the Text Editor, which could be better, and a decent chatbox needs to be improved.
Otherwise, anyone who wants to contribute:
https://www.simplemachines.org/contribute/
Otherwise, they remain active, which is good for everyone, but it's a shame that there is little interest in contributing (for those who can). It is undoubtedly an “old school” forum. And of course, social media and Discord have “stolen” a large percentage of users.
Even so, there are forums that continue to thrive.
Not in the way you mean. In nostalgia.
I think this is the only classic forum I still use. I mean there's a few I'm technically a member of, but I don't actually post.. or even read anymore now that I think of it. Like WHT, LES.
Oh I do "read" simpcity, that counts I guess. And a couple videogame forums like EvE, Albion.. but even those I typically scan the subreddits first and only hit the forums for clarifications if needed.
That is a bold faced lie.
Umm that is one confusing name. I would expect it to be some incel type forum and search results do indicate the phrase does mean that type of thing but it is also a game of some kind.
Mate archlinux forum says fluxbb on the bottom
The technologies that were FOSS before open sphere became a norm survived due to no competition.
They do not have active supporters now many years later and other people built better solutions that are free and integrate with other tools. Simple really. Evolution and culture
If you love forum software, try Flarum.
https://flarum.org
Oh right, did not realize you were referring to arch forums, my mistake. Accept my humble apology.
When phpbb was popular there so many forums without a good way to unify them.
I still have a zillion logins for phpbb forums that I never use anymore.
FB did the unify part, but FB group content was never as good as phpbb forums was during the high phpbb forum use days. They added google auth way too late to phpbb.
Unifying is a nice way to say centralization.
That is what I despise about reddit because if you get a couple of negative votes in one obscure sub you are then blacklisted from 99% of other subs and the account is effectively toast. So the reputation is like having a criminal record.
Your complaint about many logins is just the same as passwords generally. You can easily use a password manager to solve that but instead want to give up your freedom to a megacorp to do it for you.
Your choice of course.
More or less trying to say that fb/reddit with the 1 site an 1 login made it a little easier to manage. I do think phpbb suffered because of the mega sites making that part easier. I think phpbb forums had better content and the owners were better with management.
It's porn, I dunno if that means it's incel or whatever, not relevant to me.
I just enjoy pretty naked girls.
I'm a big fan of Xenforo (apart from the cost). Forums still have advantages in the way they preserve, structure, and make available information as compared to the much poorer experience on social media. However, having started up a few forums in the last few years, man, it's hard to get the user base rolling if you don't have a per-existing audience. Anytime I need a forum for less serious reasons I just spin up SMF but I always miss Xenforo when I do that.
For user base I would suggest you pouch from the oh so popular social media sites and other big forums in the niche.
Part of the decline of forums is Google's prioritization of reddit in search results.
Have you developed any particular method of doing this apart from posting links to content that adds value to those users (on your forum) in an authentic way?
stuff is way harder to search on facebook and discord than on regular forums
phpBB was great back in the day. Now, it's just easier to use Reddit and Discord with a single login and no setup/hosting required.
No value, just spam the link. Some would join some wouldn't but as per the laws of spam, some converted.
Isn't that a chicken or the egg thing though? They prioritized it because it was already very popular I guess or had gathered a critical mass of success making it one of the monolith behemoth sites we know today.