Nostalgia is the driving force behind many of our Community challenges. That’s why we couldn’t skip another exciting theme filled with some old internet-era memories. Tell us what your first forums or online communities you’ve joined are!
It can be about anything close to your professional or after-hours lives, global or local, still existing or not available anymore. If it’s possible, attach some screenshots below!
Every participant will get 100 bonus points and an “Old Forum” badge.
Let me start with my choice that dates back to 2007-2008. I’ve always liked to be up-to-date with automotive news and discussions, for which circa 15 years ago SamochodySwiata.pl (eng. Cars of the World) was a great place. It has a typical spirit for passionates forums - was vibrant and active 24/7, to die silently in the next decade. Facebook Groups, baby…
While I’ve been on the Internet since 1994, back then I was not really attached to any community. The first community I really joined, was a forum and IRC channel for a text-based online game called Orkfia.
During a community get-together 20 years ago in The Netherlands (I’m from Sweden), I met my fiancé and mother of my son. So it has shaped all of my adult life.
My first online communities emerged in the era of BBS, I remember playing chess online writing down the moves in txt. It wasn’t as dynamic and full of content as it is now, but the spirit that the sum of the parts is greater than one always remained present in various communities I was and am in, such as Dynatrace.
My first forum was an internal University forum near 2005 but I cannot share pictures. Then, I would say a dedicated Spanish forum about Perl language:
Back in the day, around the 2000´s one that standed out in Spain was Forocoches. It’s like this digital man cave and it can be a tad silly and macho at times. It’s a wild ride down the information highway, with a touch of ‘what… did I just read that?’ The good thing is that it still exists, although I think it lost a lot of relevance during the last few years.
Oh this is going back. I remember joining a forum about my Volvo. That Swedish car maker had a ton of tech in their cars and I need to access all of it. The closest dealer was over a hour away, as a broke teen, I found a Volvo VIDAS system for $100. Tossed it on an old XP Laptop and rolled back the system clock 3 years because the install would block itself if it was past the subscription expiry date.
Many tinny little forums out there that covered how to use it, i think i joined them all. Ohh those were the days!
OMG, I have a competitive advantage here. But I don’t have screenshots from the time, so I had to scrape them from the Internet. Some old ones, that were the start for me:
Oh my, from about 1986, I remember transcribing assembly code for a chess program from a magazine into a Spectrum. It was through hex codes, and I still remember some like C9 (RET), since I did a lot of Assembly programming at the time
Since the late 1990s, companies have started using email to access news groups. I remember accessing topics unrelated to work behind my boss’s back. At the time, I was using an IBM OS/2 PC.
I remember once being interested in the topic of how to become a DJ (yes it’s those beautiful years in high school xD). I spent hours browsing, listening and downloading music from the 4clubbers.pl forum. At one time you could find everything there.
Another type of forum to the heavily pirated Polish Internet site darkwarez.pl, which has already been shut down by the police. There we exchanged all kinds of games, programs, solved technical problems how to run some program, write a crack, etc… That’s where I learned to program
Now there is no need for that anymore. Everything we want is available at our fingertips and affordable. On the other hand, such combinations strongly taught logical thinking and problem solving.
Fellow 4clubber here, before the Spotify era it was my top #1 source of trance and house music. I literally just visited them a few days ago as I couldn’t find a full version of one new tune, frankly - they’re still alive, same layout, and even the shutdown of Zippyshare didn’t prevent them from operating 😎
My first Community was heavily connected with my emo-phase in the 2000s. I was 12 when my mom (yup, she is pretty cool) showed me bands like Panic! at the Disco, Green Day, 30 Second to Mars, Rise Against, etc. But my biggest crush was My Chemical Romance, with their pioneering concept rock opera album “The Black Parade”.
There was no Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube just getting started, so if you were a fangirl like me, you had limited access to the news about your favorite artist. So, I’ve joined the Polish Community of MCR fans and met some amazing people there, some of whom I still keep in touch with. So hail to the power of the Community! 💪
Had no real contact with forums until I started studying at university - back then first forum was either the one of the university for students, or the one in our students dorm - sadly no screenshots of that ancient times
First online community probably was geocaching - but I’m no longer active there.
Well, I remember one of the most import forums I used was Stackoverflow because I started programming with .NET ASP.NET, Visual Basic and C#.
Wow! Nice days programming initiation :grin:
