Don’t use your real name online.
Use a pseudonym or nickname. You can call me poopsmell zoolord.
Don’t tell the internet where you live.
Instead you can do some fun flavor text like ‘Hi, I’m from Hell/Faerie/Fictional Town 35′
Don’t share your exact age or birthday.
Use minor/adult. Less detailed while providing a way to enforce legal action.
Don’t tell people where you work.
You’ve heard about people being fired for unpopular views, right?
Don’t tell people what school you go to.
Same song second verse, with a way to provide your location making it worse.
Don’t answer quizzes that have answers to your security questions in them.
They really, really don’t need to know your mothers maiden name or what elementary school you went to as a kid.
For a detailed, serious explanation of each bullet, you can click the read more.
Don’t use your real name online. I strongly advise using a short nickname, username, or a name that isn't legally tied to you that you prefer. Don't give out your full name to strangers, especially those you've just met. It's also more fun to be able to call yourself anything you want. Use with caution on Facebook and Paypal as it is possible to get banned for non-legal names. or don’t use facebook at all.
Don’t tell the internet where you live. Giving out your location is tied for the most dangerous information you can share. A name and location can do a lot to compromise you. Don't tell anyone where you live, especially which city you live in. If some of your other data has been compromised, make it more difficult for anyone attempting to dox you by lying about where you live.
The less accurate data anyone obtains about you, the better. A fun pastime of mine has been naming fantasy places. ‘Hell’, ‘Faerie’ or a fictional town somewhere. Enthusiastically recommend it for maximum fun while keeping your data safe.
Don’t share your exact age or birthday. I understand this one seems silly, but knowing your age is another way to narrow down your identity when someone is looking you up online. I recommend being vague and giving a range instead of your exact age, like ‘Minor’ or ‘Adult.’ or ageless infinite being.
Part of the reason for doing this is also to try to make it harder for predators to find their ideal victim. Listing ‘Minor’ will still net you the legal justification you need if an adult places you in a situation such as sending you nudes, porn or other illegal content, but it will make things harder for someone who is specifically trying to find say, thirteen year olds or under.
If you want to celebrate your birthday with your online friends, keep it to a private server with people you trust.
Don’t tell people where you work. A shout-out to discourse blogs and those who hold controversial views. If you value your job, don't tell anyone about it unless absolutely necessary. If you have an online job, I would try to avoid publicly sharing known unpopular opinions and instead save it for your friends who are hopefully more understanding.
Create a separate account with a different email and a different pseudonym for any unpopular opinions/dicey content if you must post them publicly. It will be a pain in the ass, but it may save you from losing your source of income. I understand the desire to be genuine, but your safety comes first.
Don’t tell people what school you go to. Same as above. You value your education? Don’t tell the internet where you go to school. This can also compromise your physical location.
Don’t answer quizzes that have answers to your security questions in them. I know it's tempting to complete every quiz or tumblr questionnaire you come across, but take a look at it and ask yourself, "Is one of my security questions in here?" and avoid those specific ones for the sake of your account's security. Surprisingly, this is a common mistake. Keep your middle name private, your parents' names off the internet, your school history secret, and so on.
A handy little lists of forums if you decide to add one to your website! I recommend you look through their feature lists and demo boards as this won’t be a comprehensive review of services.
In the future I might grab screenshots of the control panels and more in depth look into features/use, but this is all I have time for today. If you know a good forum host in a similar vein to these, feel free to comment!
Remote Hosted
This means you don’t have to host the forum yourself, and you’ll usually receive a subdomain URL along the lines of yourforum.forumhost.net/com/org. These tend to be free with paid upgrade services.
Jcink - Arguably the most popular free forum host out there.
No adult content (sex, drugs, etc) on the free service. You can upgrade for 9.99$ monthly or 79.99$ yearly.
Proboards - The second most popular.
No adult content period. You can upgrade for 14$ a year to use a custom domain.
Boardhost - Free, I haven’t personally used this one myself.
CreateAForum - Free, I haven’t personally used this one myself.
Self Hosted
Forums that must be hosted through a typically PHP-enabled web host. Pretty much every premium web host has PHP enabled, and there are a few free ones who will also allow you to use PHP/mysql with some limits.
PHPBB - Latest Version as of 4-18-2022 is March 17th release 3.3.7
Open source, the only real limit is your experience with web hosting, coding and whatever your web hosts policy on content is.
MyBB - Latest Version as of 4-18-2022 is March 9th release 1.8.30
Open source, the only real limit is your experience with web hosting, coding and whatever your web hosts policy on content is.
SimpleMachines - Latest Version as of 4-18-2022 is February 11th release 2.1.1
Read license agreement before downloading.
Remember not to *hotlink images from other websites and always credit art/graphics/code/etc to the website you received them from! If you have a lot to credit for, I recommend making a page dedicated to it and using notepad/sticky notes to hold on to urls.
While we’re all nostalgic for the old ways, we should also be better and more supportive to creators. A lot of creators from way back when disappeared off the web entirely for a mix of lack of time and not being recognized for their work. There are still popular anime images shared on tumblr that I see without credit. When possible I try to add credit links myself.
*Hotlinking is the act of using another site’s bandwidth by displaying their website asset – like an image, video, or audio file – on a different website via a direct web link. You should instead right click > save as > and upload to your own website or an image hosting service like imgur.
