[rat87]

> but now even just running the software is much more demanding and expensive. Never mind the fact that the UI has to be slick or people will be put off, because the bar is much higher now.

I'm skeptical of this. There's likely some open source software that's good enough and considering the advances in hardware likely much cheaper to run then it was way back when.

Besides the fact that many people prefer large platforms like reddit or Facebook or discord where they already have an account (don't have to make another one) I'd say the problem is the human one not software. Time and effort to popularize the forum and either paying for moderation or convincing people to volunteer to moderate and deal with inevitable shitshow that comes with moderating controversial topics even if forum isn't really related to them.

[TylerE]

Good enough isn’t nearly good enough. You’re competing against apps, offering just a much better use experience.

One bit of feedback I got repeatedly from users on a couple communities (now dead) I helped run was how much harder posting image and video content in a forum is - true user generated content I mean, not shared from YouTube. Even that meant ricking around with bbcode.

[homarp]

i somehow envision a forum as text first. Image and video hosting is 'out of scope'.

[TylerE]

Times change. About 95% of the world’s population now carries a good-to-amazing camera in their pocket almost all the time.

[defrost]

Don't confuse penetration and ownership:

  As of 2024, there are approximately 4.88 billion smartphone users worldwide, accounting for about 60.42% of the global population. The number of smartphones in use globally is around 7.21 billion.

and

   The global smartphone penetration rate was estimated at 69 percent in 2023, up from 2022. This is based on an estimated 6.7 billion smartphone subscriptions worldwide and a global...

( various conflicting sources ).

A number of people have more than a single phone.

[jrmg]

Yeah, it should not be hard! Cheap hardware is orders of magnitude faster than it was in the 2000s, and we could run dynamic forums written in janky inefficient Perl on it, and serve thousand's of requests a second.