Modern day BBS's

[Paul]

Some members of retro-link.com continue to run their Bulletin Board System, mostly for historical purposes.  I created this thread so that those of you running a BBS can tell us about it.  I, along with other members, would love to read your story; so have at it!   

[smj]

On the SDF Public Access UNIX System (1987) we still run our own BBS software called 'bboard'.  Its an
interface which is similar to the TOPS-20 BBOARD which could also be read under the MM TOPS-20 mail
manager. It features multiple boards which users can create on their own.  It has replied threading and
also supports user polls with up to 9 response choices per poll.  boards can be set to anonymous when
they are created, but its up to the user to reply anonymously if they choose to do so.

Unfortunately archiving didn't really start until about 1995, so many old messages are lost.  It seems to
have peaked in 2004 with 5,437 posts and 2,678 replies - though in 2008 we had 2,569 and 7,201 replies.
So far this year there have been 615 posts and 2,023 replies.

At some point in 1998 a user or users attempted to create a 'web interface' for the bboard which was
not well received.  After much discussion it was decided that no SDF bboard posts would ever show up
on the web and users were asked not to develop interfaces to it.

bboard was written to operate on a dumb printing terminal but does support VT100 80x25.