For a real trip down memory lane, here's how "mods" were installed for phpBB: <a href="https://github.com/MapBBCode/mapbb-phpbb2/blob/master/1_0_to_1_4.mod" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/MapBBCode/mapbb-phpbb2/blob/master/1_0_to...</a><p>You'd download a mod that contained installation instructions like the above, fire up your code editor of choice and then would manually change the source code of phpBB.<p>Later on, automated mod installers started being somewhat reliable, but especially if you had multiple mods touching similar parts of the codebase you had to learn how to adjust the instructions.<p>I don't really miss these times, but I did learn a lot about PHP through it.
> Let's say you want to go back to 2001 and experience the glorious days of the early forum-sphere.<p>‘Peak’ would have been Invision Power Board 1.3 IMO, but still cool archaeology project :)<p>And lo:<p>- <a href="https://github.com/ernestbuffington/IPB-1.3.1-LegacyArchive" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ernestbuffington/IPB-1.3.1-LegacyArchive</a><p>- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invision_Community#Version_1.x.x" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invision_Community#Version_1.x...</a>
Is there a good forum stack that is as moddable as phpbb was back in the day? Every Discourse instance I see seems _very_ similar so I've assumed there's not much of an interesting plugin ecosystem
It is pretty easy to do plugins and custom themes in Discourse, most look the same just because the UX is good enough and we don't live in an era of hyper customization that early 2000s forums did. A good example of a pretty customized Discourse install is the Blizzard forums: <a href="https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/blizzard/" rel="nofollow">https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/blizzard/</a> and Unreal: <a href="https://forums.unrealengine.com/categories?tag=unreal-engine" rel="nofollow">https://forums.unrealengine.com/categories?tag=unreal-engine</a>
I was looking into forum software maybe 10 years ago and came across Flarum. Worth a look<p><a href="https://flarum.org/" rel="nofollow">https://flarum.org/</a>
Wonder if anyone will make memory/injection-safe imitations of old software like this. I'd imagine it'd be pretty eye-catching if you did run a public discussion board with exactly the vibe, syntax, etc. of old phpBB.