phpBB • Free and Open Source Forum Software

Posted by jasidog on August 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm:

Course in them days you didn’t have myspace, twitter, facebook, blogs (Not in easy abundance.). Not to mention a billions other social/community sites the young uns flock too.

I guess the younger crowd will tend to go to the new cool things rather than the old established

Posted by Jwxie on August 21st, 2008 at 4:19 pm:

The BBS software back in the 90s really impressed the 70s and 80s. There are more 90s coming into the open source / bbs community since they will google things they want and most of the time they will get it from a forum.
For the Asian communities, especially the Chinese communities, you ask 100 teens from ages 12-18, maybe 10 people will tell you they have made their own forums. And 20 will tell you they have the tendency to make one.
The Discuz! softwares really gets the Chinese community with the heat of BB Software. Yet over the past couple years, I have noticed that, there is a slight going-down with many bbs software. Is it really normal?

I am not a coder but I have been with many open source softwares for many years. I started learning software since I was 10, and I am now 17.
Regardless whichever community we want to analyze, the overall is still pretty fine. Yet, I have seem people going and leave. I just see the greatness of open source, but at the same time, there is just a slow falling with some BB Software. Maybe phpbb.com is still working fine, but some other places or some other softwares, even with their hard-work, falling down is not a question. What my really concern is, what can we expect with the future?

Posted by Dog Cow on August 21st, 2008 at 8:49 pm:

Two things:

1.) These people have gotten older and may still be around here (I am!)

2.) There are a lot of web sites and software packages that weren’t around back in 2004, which is when I started my site (in Feb). Looking back at 2004 for phpBB, it looked like there were a lot of exciting MODs being developed by the younger set.

Posted by Eric Martindale on August 21st, 2008 at 10:09 pm:

Yeah, I really believe the whole social media revolution is really an indicator of this shift. As the Lycos / Geocities group has grown up, more and more focus is being shifted to the conversation and social interaction.

As more and more platforms come out to address the same things (bulletin boards, then forums, then blogs, then lifestreaming…) I’m sure we’ll see continuing change in the demographic focus, as the whole idea of “community” will begin to penetrate more and more minds.

Posted by Robbie on August 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm:

I’m a teenager. Just throwing that out there 🙂

Posted by Drake Bozono on August 21st, 2008 at 11:05 pm:

I look at like this. The kiddies (as most might call them) tend to move onto other things in life, like work, relationship. Most just to tend to outgrow the community after several year and leave never to be heard from again. There should be another boom in the number of people using open source software in the next few years as things change and more kiddies flood the forums once again as i have noticed in the last several years since using phpBB 1 back a long time ago.

Posted by Jwxie on August 22nd, 2008 at 5:20 am:

I know there is still one site using phpbb1. I am serious. It still working well.

to Drake Bozon:
I agree. I am very impress when I first join facebook. I was like, “wooo..I like it”.

well, for the past few years, new “BBS” emerged. I mean traditionally it’s thread-based. There is a site that is “chat-room-thread-BBS-like”. Meaning you create a thread and then people will join you in the chat. everything is going to be record.
It isn’t a new thing but it’s cool for people who likes chat-like-bbs.
for the tw people, one the most famous bbs site is called Ptt BBS. (it’s not very new…it;s back to 2000)
It is not any web-based bbs, rather it’s like a command-line bbs.
you may check it out here and see what is it like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Technology_Temple

so the question is, who will continue with open source? Is it really google does the work? MS does the first coded-library but it’s really mostly ASP I think. Google comes and got its API library, code library, then Yahoo got his UI Library, and I have forgot the latest one… i don’t remember which company…
I think google does a great job in motivating “open source”. This is just my thought but that’s how I started.

Posted by Anthony on August 23rd, 2008 at 7:05 am:

Well, its also that case that much open source software has matured. Im a 30 year old software developer by trade, working on linux but on a closed source commercial product. We do use a lot of opensource software in house along side our commercial product. Why not? Its free, its supportable, and the right applications are trusted and proven.

Posted by Khan Kardam on August 25th, 2008 at 4:22 pm:

Joomla! has a large user base that changed dramatically due to the split and the huge change of the development team in the last years.
The phpBB team seems to be more constant.

Posted by Martin Truckenbrodt on August 30th, 2008 at 12:16 pm:

Hello,
phpBB and/or Joomla? phpBB is integrated into Joomla. Joomla is not integrated into phpBB. I think is a very important point. I think it’s not a good situation.
Joomlas has extensions. phpBB has MODs.
Look at the phpBB MOD DB. All of the validated MODs are gimmicks or at least small helpfull tools. No validated calendar, photo gallery, catagorized link database, catagorized download database, catagorized personal websites … by now.
IMO this is the great technical difference. IMO it would be better that phpBB with its possibilties for internal communication and the good permission system should be the base for the Joomla extensions and features.
IMO it will important for the future of phpBB to think more about the real meaning of community. IMO we should think more about to use phpBB as a webbased software for associations and clubs.
I don’t want to say that the phpBB developement team has to do it or to program it. These are only my personal thoughts. Just think about it if you want.
Bye Martin

Posted by lostempire on August 31st, 2008 at 8:07 am:

It may be shooting slightly off-topic but is encompassed in the aroma of changing scenario of world-wide-web – the fact – that young in the web is going more in the hands of the handful few of the giants: myspace, facebook, orkut, bebo, and various games and video sites. There is no need to invent or to even have something of your ‘own’. The excitemet of booking your own domain ( or having even a free webspace ) and then build html pages and setting up php scripts, and venturing to produce a snippet or a module i getting drowned by the urge to ‘google’ everything ( heck! why not use ask or yahoo ) ………….
the internet scenario has changed so much, so much monopolistic corps and complex things like flash and .flv to deal with ….

Posted by ahsan on September 19th, 2008 at 10:47 am:

t may be shooting slightly off-topic but is encompassed in the aroma of changing scenario of world-wide-web – the fact – that young in the web is going more in the hands of the handful few of the giants: myspace, facebook, orkut, bebo, and various games and video sites. There is no need to invent or to even have something of your ‘own’. The excitemet of booking your own domain ( or having even a free webspace ) and then build html pages and setting up php scripts, and venturing to produce a snippet or a module i getting drowned by the urge to ‘google’ everything ( heck! why not use ask or yahoo ) …

Posted by RMcGirr83 on November 27th, 2008 at 11:28 am:

Other than the fact that I seem to be one of the people skewing NeoThermic’s stats, in my “day” the greatest computer on earth took up the size of a large warehouse. Now you can house it in a closet. I applaud those “kiddies” looking to better themselves by “fiddling” around with OS. It can only improve their chances of being able to be successful later on in life.

Heck, I fiddle around as well but as a hobby sort of thing.

Old(er) people UNITE!! 🙂

Posted by nORaa on August 30th, 2009 at 11:02 pm:

Well, its also that case that much open source software has matured. Im a 30 year old software developer by trade, working on linux but on a closed source commercial product. We do use a lot of opensource software in house along side our commercial product. Why not? Its free, its supportable, and the right applications are trusted