Reviving phpBB 1.4.4: Running a 2001 Forum in Docker
Getting phpBB 1.4.4 working in Docker
phpBB 1.4.4, the last release before the forum software became famous, was built for a different era—PHP 3, register_globals, and a high-trust web. A developer has patched it to run on modern PHP 5 and MySQL 4, then containerized it with Docker. The guide covers the few necessary fixes, from SQL syntax to cookie handling, and shows how to launch a piece of internet history with a single command. Surprisingly, many features we still love—multiple themes, ranks, BBCode, moderation—were already present.
This is truly "a forum that's free".
- bartman
For a real trip down memory lane, here's how "mods" were installed for phpBB: https://github.com/MapBBCode/mapbb-phpbb2/blob/master/1_0_to...
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.
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.
I don't really miss these times, but I did learn a lot about PHP through it.
- Lammy
> Let's say you want to go back to 2001 and experience the glorious days of the early forum-sphere.
‘Peak’ would have been Invision Power Board 1.3 IMO, but still cool archaeology project :)
And lo:
- https://github.com/ernestbuffington/IPB-1.3.1-LegacyArchive
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invision_Community#Version_1.x...
- rtpg
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
- LoganDark
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.
- rcstank
Nice now do PHP-Nuke!