For your entertainment: Tyler’s embarrassing history of creating forums

[Tyler]

I originally got hooked on forums around 2004. I think I was 13. Around 2006 I created my first of many, most of which didn’t go far, and all of which make me cringe to look at now. But I think it would be fun to have you guys laugh with me, so I'm going to share some. I recently found some screenshots of a handful of these forums, although there’s a good 10+ that are missing and probably gone forever...

(You can click any of these images to make them bigger.)

1. A Pokémon forum, made with a free forum maker and a free domain. Somehow, it was slightly popular. I was probably 14-15 when I made it.

2. That same Pokémon forum, but upgraded to paid, professional software. It stayed popular during its run. This one had many different designs you could choose from. I wish I had photos of those.

3. This was my great idea to combine web developers and forum administrators into one forum. It didn't last long. I was probably 16 or 17 at the time. (In these photos, images are broken/missing.)

4. This was a Call of Duty forum that I honestly hardly remember making. I do remember that the official Call of Duty website had it listed on their site, which was cool.

5. This one was my forum dedicated to other forum administrators, like myself. It was my most successful one and a lot of people who still run forums today actually remember this forum pretty well.

6. This one was my favorite forum, a forum for old "badass" trucks. Basically focused on 4x4 trucks from the '80s and older. It was growing decently but I ended up taking it offline because I was struggling with finding my way in life. A lot of people were upset about that.

Then I have some screenshots of a bunch that I never actually opened to the public...

1. French Bulldogs

2. People from Long Island, NY that like 4x4 stuff

3. A general discussion forum with a sarcastic tone

4. Xbox

5. Overwatch (video game)

6. Apple forum called iForum, lol

7. A main website to show off all of my forums that I never actually created, but I liked the logo I made, lol.

I'm missing pictures of a whole bunch more. I don't even remember what they were about. I think there was one for music and movies, one for another video game, one for R/C trucks, and more. I really don't know why I've always had a fascination for forums, but I do. I've always wanted to have a successful one, but it's hard to do. T3G is by far my best one and I almost can't believe it!

 

[NukedTaco]

The idea of adminaddict forum cracks me up. Its a forum for people who moderate forums. Was every member also a moderator or did you have super moderators to moderate the moderators.

 

[Tyler]

The idea of adminaddict forum cracks me up. Its a forum for people who moderate forums. Was every member also a moderator or did you have super moderators to moderate the moderators.

There was super moderators to moderate the moderators of other forums who moderated the members. But I was the administrator so I was moderating the super moderators that moderated the moderators. And I added a second administrator so I also administrated the administrator.

But to be serious, it was for people who run a forum (like I do here), and not just moderate them, which is a little different. It is a bit of a paradox.

 

[NukedTaco]

I think your next choice of forum should be for people who enjoy creating forums

 

[Tyler]

I think your next choice of forum should be for people who enjoy creating forums

I was thinking for people who run a forum about Tacomas. So me and the TW owner would be the members.

 

[midnight20pro]

Love it. I'm a systems administrator so I've done all this before also vBulleting, phpBB, openBB, nodeBB so I've deployed a bunch of forums as well. but mine were all private forums none were built to go mainstream or get public visibility. Sometimes I deploy the latest versions of forum software just to see how the tech has evolved and just to see where it goes.

Nowadays I actually advocate for privacy and generally am anti social networking websites so I have a forum software running on my local network only that I use with my wife and friends and family. I also have a private instance of mediawiki (wikipedia engine) that we use to keep all sorts of useful information to help us manage our household, finances, and you can use it for media and content as well. I think every family should have some kind of digital historian that makes sure to keep the family photos, media, information and all that so it can be passed down. Big tech would like us all to live, breathe and procreate while using their platforms but you never own the content and they will always profit from it. Building things that intentionally do not integrate into those systems is extremely valuable. Case in point I'm on this forum and not on a facebook group / instagram page etc.

Props for caring about community building and for delving into the fun world of LAMP stack tools

 

[NukedTaco]

Sounds exclusive but you would also have to let the owners of customtacos, tacomaforum, and tacomahq join

 

[Tyler]

Love it. I'm a systems administrator so I've done all this before also vBulleting, phpBB, openBB, nodeBB so I've deployed a bunch of forums as well. but mine were all private forums none were built to go mainstream or get public visibility. Sometimes I deploy the latest versions of forum software just to see how the tech has evolved and just to see where it goes.

Nowadays I actually advocate for privacy and generally am anti social networking websites so I have a forum software running on my local network only that I use with my wife and friends and family. I also have a private instance of mediawiki (wikipedia engine) that we use to keep all sorts of useful information to help us manage our household, finances, and you can use it for media and content as well. I think every family should have some kind of digital historian that makes sure to keep the family photos, media, information and all that so it can be passed down. Big tech would like us all to live, breathe and procreate while using their platforms but you never own the content and they will always profit from it. Building things that intentionally do not integrate into those systems is extremely valuable. Case in point I'm on this forum and not on a facebook group / instagram page etc.

Props for caring about community building and for delving into the fun world of LAMP stack tools

That’s cool, I never expected to have a member on here that has experience with vBulletin, etc.

 

[midnight20pro]

I've been a nerd since birth and I've worked in my industry at a professional level believe it or not since age 13. I started my one man consulting company when I was in high school, ran it through college and shut it down when I went to work in Silicon Valley. Left the valley in 2012 and now I do my best to find little nibbles of freedom where possible.

The only tip for running forums is to stay up to the minute on patches and updates because there's 0 day vulnerabilities coming out all the time for popular community software and to make sure you do the regular database maintenance and backups to keep it all in working order and secure. So yeah, I'm a huge nerd don't feel bad about your own nerd history

 

[Jay]

These are all so awesome.
the newbie chill section lol
Shit made me laugh.
Paige looks so young

 

[Tyler]

I just remembered I made this thread.

…buuut, I do have a few more I can add. This is a reminder to myself to post some of the other screenshots I found.