Comment by IshKebab
10 hours ago
This is the most rose tinted thing I've ever seen. phpBB rightly has a reputation for being awful.
In fairness it is possible to do old-school forums well, but the only example I have ever seen is the D language forum.
It's super fast, no signatures taking up 80% of the page. It does still have the "page 1 or 423" problem but I guess that wouldn't be too hard to fix. Apparently it even can be accessed via usenet clients.
But please don't glorify awful phpBB shit.
I agree that phpBB itself was awful, especially setting up mods and keeping everything patched, but the vibe at the time was great. That’s what people are nostalgic for.
The Dlang forum software is truly excellent and I think more people should use it. Not sure why it doesn’t get more notice.