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 nor crawlable by these search crawlers they are not mentioned . Where did all those forums went…are there still active forums ?
Isn’t lemmy basically that, but with modern technology? PHPBB was a nightmare for a sysadmin.
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.
What was/is wrong with PhpBB?
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.
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