My first forum software i encountered was MyBB, i was looking for free forum software and one site gave free Mybb hosted forums. I used it and that was my learning curve. Tried SMF, phpBB, Xenforo and ElkArte.

The first forums I joined were vBulletin, the big wigs back then, every self-hosted option looked really bad.

I think my first project ever was on a forum similar to suddenlaunch and I used to be on some friends  Ezboard (they became yuku) communities. It was either a Zelda forum (I bet you didn't see that coming) or a site to teach Spanish to some friends. I don't think eitehr project worked out very well, haha.

My first forum software was phpbb3. My first paid software was vBulletin 4 and vBulletin 5 which I mainly used vBulletin 5 for a good while before switching to Xenforo 1. I currently use Xenforo 2 but I came to learn Xenforo has some of the best forum software out there. Mainly because you can basically do anything with it and add add-ons.. etc

Phpbb3 is good for a free software though. Never used myBB on a website but I know that myBB is better than phpbb3 in my opinion from the interface I've seen in the past

Posted by: marteebe

This could be as an admin yourself or out in the wild when you first started joining communities. For me, the first ever software I came across was ProBoards when I was part of a clan when I used to play Runescape all those years ago haha. Was a great little piece of software back then - had great fun on it!

What about you?

My very first forum was awful.  No admin, no rules.  Basically a glorified guestbook where anyone could post anything under any name.  We are talking like 1999 or so. lol  After that, ProBoards hosted, then phpBB. 🙂

Whatever the G4tv forums used back in the day, I think they were using some kind of customize software before they moved over to Vbulltin software but I forget.

My first as admin was IPBfree software. So glad I got off of that software.

The first forum software that I encountered as a user was Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB), which was later rebranded as UBB.classic. You can see it on the WayBack Machine, my username back in the day was andy_dobo24: https://web.archive.org/web/20000621152847/http://www.gamingupdate.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi

The first forum software that I used as an admin was ezboard. It was ok, pretty basic but you could make some ok looking forums with it and do some basic HTML based modifications.. Sadly I can't remember the URL, they had that many different servers that they were hosted on.

Posted by: Nerdface

The first forum software that I encountered as a user was Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB), which was later rebranded as UBB.classic. You can see it on the WayBack Machine, my username back in the day was andy_dobo24: https://web.archive.org/web/20000621152847/http://www.gamingupdate.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi

The first forum software that I used as an admin was ezboard. It was ok, pretty basic but you could make some ok looking forums with it and do some basic HTML based modifications.. Sadly I can't remember the URL, they had that many different servers that they were hosted on.

That UBB reminds me of proboard's layout, in a decent way.

Ran a music site started with Invision Power Board free version 1.1 i think after upgrade from phpbb, then eventually moved over to vbulletin back in the mid 2000's 

Posted by: Gh0st4unt3r

Ran a music site started with Invision Power Board free version 1.1 i think after upgrade from phpbb, then eventually moved over to vbulletin back in the mid 2000's 

I ran vBulletin right before going with Xenforo.  It was pretty good! 😀