Largest Bulletin Boards on the Internet

**dvduval** · Feb 14, 2003 14:40

I'm trying to do a school project documenting the largest Bulletin Boards on the internet. I'm comparing the rise of Website based bulletin boards to newsgroups. It seems that newsgroups are especially dominated by file traders these days. The same applies to IRC chat. Finally, it seems the real discussions are happening in boards like this:
www.sitepointforums.com
www.webmasterworld.com
www.webhostingtalk.com
www.slashdot.org (blog or forum or both)
www.hardforum.com
So what are the other BIG FORUMS?
I'm definitely interested in non-webmaster type forums also: politics, society and culture, entertainment, news, sports

**dvduval** · Feb 14, 2003 14:52

Here are some additions:
http://forums.vteen.com/
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php
http://www.utteraccess.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?Cat
http://www.msmagazine.com/cgi-local/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi
http://forums.military.com/1/OpenTopic
http://uk.playstation.com/user/forums.jhtml

Still trying to decide what criteria to use in deciding the biggest forums on the internet

**Ignite** · Feb 14, 2003 18:42

Already posted this in that other "big boards" thread, but could fit here.

http://forums.somethingawful.com
Started as a humour site/forum, but has branched out into games, politics, cars, and a bunch of other "good"

stuff. Basically anything that might interest a male from age 12-24 with a sense of humour.

"There are currently 1126 forum members and 37 wanna-be members on the boards.

There are 10,784 registered members."

It costs $10 to register, just to be able to view and post on the boards. But if you ask the owner nicely, it may be possible to get a temp account to look around.

**Mr. Brownstone** · Feb 14, 2003 19:07

Behold! The marvel that is the UTA “LOL” thread:

http://forums.utassault.net/showthre...?threadid=1289

**Bleys** · Feb 25, 2003 22:34

www.ughh.com has huge forums (Registered Members: 33,626 - Total Posts: 2,030,620)

and the www.helponthe.net forums are pretty big too ( Members: 54,302 | Threads: 100,102 | Posts: 651,557)

**Anat** · Feb 26, 2003 07:57

Wow! Those are some huge forums - I wonder what it takes in terms of web space and bandwidth to run those.

My forums are not that big (yet

) but we're heading in the right direction I think. Right now I believe they are the largest cat related forums on the internet - correct me anyone if I'm wrong.

Latest stats -
Registered Members: 3661
Total Threads: 14666 | Total Posts: 154386

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums

**DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR** · Mar 4, 2003 02:13

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/ -- 3.25 million posts right now.

**Nokiaringtone.org** · Mar 4, 2003 02:55

This one is for Dutch youth. Just look at some stats (who's online, number of posts, ...) and you'll see that this really is a huge forum for such a small potential audience. I guess almost everyone under 25 in Holland (and Belgium) knows about this forum.

http://forum.fok.nl

**risto10** · Mar 21, 2003 17:45

One of the biggest forum is http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/
over 2.3 million post with
Currently Online: 6566 Guests , 228 Members
I havent seen anywhere else so many guests online.

**kilcher** · Mar 22, 2003 06:02

This thread has a list of vBulletin boards with over 1 million posts...

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...threadid=47430

**DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR** · Mar 23, 2003 04:41

Originally Posted by risto10

Currently Online: 6566 Guests , 228 Members
I havent seen anywhere else so many guests online.

sounds like that might be a problem with the way it's counting guests. e.g. counting each page view as a new "guest" or something.

**dhn** · Mar 30, 2003 09:30

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/

Registered Members: 36,250
Total Threads: 123,611
Total Posts: 1,317,670
There are 818 Active Users Online

**MobileBadBoy** · Mar 30, 2003 10:15

http://disboards.com

Members: 47,984, Threads: 241,620, Posts: 2,089,326

**nuno** · Mar 30, 2003 16:50

Originally Posted by Bleys

www.ughh.com has huge forums (Registered Members: 33,626 - Total Posts: 2,030,620)

Is that UBB or what?

**DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR** · Mar 30, 2003 19:29

Originally Posted by nuno

Is that UBB or what?

it appears to be an ASP one from the file extensions.

**Bleys** · Mar 30, 2003 19:46

Yeah, I'm not sure what they are. But I don't think they're UBB because they appear to be ASP based.

They might be proprietary... but I really don't know.

**nomatteus** · Mar 30, 2003 20:19

http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/
Members: 40,402, Threads: 92,438, Posts: 316,484

Lots of members there.

**DPC** · Mar 30, 2003 20:38

There's nothing bigger than the IGN forums [img]images/smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Total Messages: 51,543,769 (36,403 posted today)

http://boards.ign.com

**dethfire** · Mar 30, 2003 20:54

how does one attract so many people? You'd think my science forum would be easy, but it seems not. hmmmmm

**SVTBlackLight01** · Apr 6, 2003 00:57

Not the most active, but a lot of members.

http://ford-trucks.com/forums/
Members: 90,672, Threads: 109,833, Posts: 682,951

**PC_Freak** · Apr 7, 2003 05:06

http://games.telenet.be/forum

a dutch games forum managed by a belgian ISP

**Rick** · Apr 7, 2003 12:24

Originally Posted by DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR

sounds like that might be a problem with the way it's counting guests. e.g. counting each page view as a new "guest" or something.

I have heard of boards that set a extremely long session expiry time so that it appears the boards are more active - could explain massive number of guests supposedly 'online'

ZOO