I started creating forums in mid 2024, and I always remember the very first forum I created. It was a general chat forum, and the only thing I can not remember is the name of the forum I chose, but I remember it being something with central at the end of it.

That forum never really took off, as I was new to running forums back then.

Do you remember the first forum you created?

Yep the very first forum I created was a Pokemon rom hacking community. This was back in 2009 when I had no clue what I was doing, and I didn't even really know much about Pokemon rom hacking. Plus the tools we had back then were very limited lol. I used Forumotion to host it.

I created my first forum in 2017, it was a support forum for my online magazine. The forum was built on wordpress. The first open forum I build was in 2020. It was on SMF.

Yup!

The first forum I ran, began in 2003, and was eventually named Ayeka's Bliss, after one of the rival characters in the anime, Tenchi Muyo. It started out as a Fan-Shrine to Princess Ayeka-- only because she's considered an underdog in the anime fan-base, and for some strange reason, I'm always rooting for Number Two to take the lead, win the day, capture the protagonist's heart.

It was in 2005 that a random new member, who only posted once, commented that my "site was boring, and that I should have a role play or something". I've never role played using a forum before, and I had never actually been a Game Master before, but I did recently pick up a new role playing game that fit my website's concept very well, Big Eyes Small Mouth Second Revised Edition. (Yeah, I know, it's a mouth full.) So, I began my first ever role playing game as GM, and for lack of a better name, I titled it, Destiny's Fear. Why? I honestly couldn't tell ya! Destiny is always a powerful word to use when world building and playing an epic adventure. It makes the people participating feel like they're a part of something much bigger than just their characters. And fear, because, well, sure, why not?!

That game ran for about two years, with 2007 being the most active any forum I'd ever run-- until a hardware failure killed corrupted the webserver I had built, an old Pentium III with Windows XP or Vista on it... I don't remember which. I had to completely start over, but luckily I had a farily forgiving community back then, and a bunch of die-hard Tenchi Muyo fans! I learned a valuable lesson about database back ups and redundancy. Anyway, I restarted that game, and this time, the game lasted until 2010 or 2011, when we ended that game because the characters nearly obliterated the Universe (I wonder how quickly characters from my current favorite, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha would destroy the universe? I might have to find out!)

Anyway, that site came to a halt in 2012. I had suffered extreme burnout and needed a break. I pretty much abandoned most of the Internet, and worked on a lot of offline journalling and fan-fiction creation. Of course, today attempting to run my latest forum, I'm kicking myself because I don't think I'll ever see any forum I create have as many as 20 active members per week again. But, maybe with the downfall of Social Media, it could happen, right? World Domination, here we come...

My first forum was a complete mess, I wont even lie. I used free hosting that was showing ads everywhere. It didn't have any structure, no niche. I even invited my friends, they posted like 2 threads and disappeared.

My first forum was a general chat. It never really took off as I had planned because I do not really know what I was doing then. So, starting out was like a learning process for me. You would make mistakes but you will learn in the process for sure.

Yeah.

Believe it or not, I was gothic when I was a teenager. LOL. It’s humorous because I’m pretty much a big ole hillbilly now.

I made a gothic forum using phpBB version 1. Maybe 1999ish. Version 1 was very old school. Version 2 came out after that and I went to it with other forums.

I even remember using PhpNuke with phpBB integrated into it. I miss phpNuke. That was a fun CMS.

My first forum was based on a book series that I am a fan of. Having that specific of a niche` on a forum…..I didn’t realize what it would be like to run a forum to begin with.

One of my first forums would have been a forum about American Horror Story that @Ravenfreak helped me with. There could have actually been forums before that but I can’t remember.

I launched my first forum a few years ago, and the memory is still pretty fresh. Looking back, I made a mistake by choosing the niche based mainly on demand rather than something I was genuinely passionate about. It taught me that interest in the subject really matters when running a forum.

Yes, I do remember my first forum which I made for free, I surprised myself. I was forum posting across the internet on all forums aligned with gaming sites. Then after a while, I got fed up with search engines always leading me astray away from my niche. So out of frustration, rather so, out of protest, being quite new to forums, without proper research, being young & rash I created my own forum. It had 20 viewers straight away.

Looking back now, with the knowledge I know now, it could have been a great success.