Active Forum Directory

List of active forums on the web

Last updated: Octobre, 29th

General Discussion forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Basementcommunity - Basementcommunity is an active message board for talking about general things and specific things okay?

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Urban75 - Long-standing and very active forum based in Brixton, London. Common topics of discussion are music and politics (with aprogressive/radical bent).

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 The WELL - General discussion board (Paid members only)

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 The Straight Dope forums - General discussion forum focused on a wide range of topics, originally tied to the Straight Dope Q&A column.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Something Awful - Large, long-running internet culture forum known for games, threads, and community subforums.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 knockout.chat - A modern, laid-back general forum that grew out of the old Facepunch community, mixing video-first threads with gaming talk, art, tech and everyday chatter.

Internet Culture related (Community shared stuff like memes, images, videos

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 b3ta - A long-running joke/photo/image community where people share funny submissions and debate the internet.

Social Criticism & Critical Thinking

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Reject Convenience forum - Slower-paced forum with some interesting conversations.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 awful.systems - Active group of forums that were subreddits but migrated off the platform a few years ago. All are very snarky forums that are critical of tech fascism and AI hype.

Politic related forums

Privacy related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 PrivacyGuides Discussion - Community discussion around privacy-focused guidance.

Animal & Pet related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇲 Rabbits Online - A forum for rabbit owners with topics about rabbit care, health, diet and much.

🇬🇧/🇺🇲 The Planted Tank Forum - A forum for planted freshwater aquarium enthusiasts.

Tech & Media related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Linus Tech Tips - Official forum for the Linus Tech Tips Youtube channel.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Ars Open Forum - Forum for Ars Technica, a tech news website.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 [H]ard|Forum - Tech, computers, OSes, and related discussion.

Linux related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Linux Mint Forums - Linux Mint help, discussion, and community support.

Windows related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 WinClassic - Forum about customizing Windows.

Macintosh related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe - Macintosh-themed discussion on Agora Road.

Webmaster & Webdesign related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 The Admin Zone - An old school forum for admins and webmasters that has been around since over two decades and is still pretty active. Active discussions about community management, the financial side of running a website or webservice, graphic and webdesign related stuff, hosting and much more.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Blackhatworld - Oldschool forum for people that want to share how they make money online by various methods. Some are white hack, some blackhat and a lot of stuff that can be categorized as grey area methods that are not particular illegal.

Webdesign & webdevelopment related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 treefort forum - Very small community focused on webdev, plus general discussion.

Old web & Web Revival related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Loebas - Forum for supporters of the Web Revival and people who dislike what social media has done to our species.

Art & Design related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 MelonLand Forum - A forum to discuss all types of art and creative projects.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Recolor.me Forums - A place to create avatars, play minigames, and have discussions with your friends or the site’s community.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Comic Fury Webcomic Hosting Forum - Very Active forum for a webcomic hosting community / service.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Lost Media Wiki Forums - A Place to discuss and share all forms of obscure, found, and lost media.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Youth Culture 2000 - A retro webcore themed forum that is relatively active, dedicated to the y2k era of aesthetics online.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Blender Artists - Unofficial art discussion forum for the users of the Blender 3D software.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Krita Artists - Official art discussion forum for users of the Krita digital illustration software.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Aesprite - Official art discussion forum for users of the Aesprite pixel art software.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Inkscape Forum - Official art discussion forum for users of the Inkscape vector illustration software.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 The Deviantart Forum - Forum for users of the art site Deviantart.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Frutiger Aero Archive Forums - Forum for discussing Frutiger Aero and related aesthetics.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 YellowTealPurple.net - A general art and discussion forum for creatives.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 FruityRumpus - A general art and discussion forum.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Krita Artists - Small but active community for artists and discussion.

Music genre specific forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 HappyHardcore - A forum for Happy Hardcore music fans—tracks, artists, events, and scene talk.

Personal homepage related communities

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 32-Bit-Café - Community of like-minded website hobbyists and professionals helping to make the personal web fruitful and bountiful again. Offers a lot more than only the forum and has an active and friendly community.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 MelonLand Forum - Brings together artists and old web enthusiasts with personal homepages. A friendly communtiy that offers tools for community building, webdesign help and gives great inspiration for personal homepages.

Privacy related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 I2P Forum The forum for anything related to the Invisible Internet Project (I2P), an anonymous network layer that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication using end to end encryption.

Privacy related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Reject Convenience Forum This forum is linked to the youtube account of Youtube Reject Convenience. The forum's main focus is on privacy related discussions. But there as well are discussions about the decentralization of the web and some old web related stuff.

Photography related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Dpreview Forums - One of the most frequented forums for amateur photographers, professionals and pixelpeepers. A lot of knowledge about cameras, lenses and accessories is shared here including in-depth reviews and user made tutorials.

Music related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Music Banter - One of the most frequented forums to talk about music in general, different music styles and scenes. It also features a large subforum on song writing and a smaller, yet still decent subforum about music production.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 KVR Audio Boards - Very large & very active forum, partly about music in general but with a strong focus on making / producing music and the hardware side of things. KVR Audio hosts support forums for a lot of manufacturers and software providers.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Gearspace Board - Very large & very active forum for audio professionals with a very large section about music production and studio equipment. The focus on the hardware side of things is even bigger than on KVR Audio.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 555-5555 - focused on electronic music and dance music. Low activity.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 DIY Conspiracy - DIY punk, hardcore & underground music forum.

Computer related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Bleeping Computer Forum - Anything computer related and more can be discussed here. Questions are usually answered in a timely manner. A place for pros and noobs to hang around and discuss about hardware and software related (nerdy) stuff.

Gaming related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Minecraftforum - Ultra active community regarding everything minecraft. Server setup, modding, addons marketplace, clans, tools, data packs, modding tutorials. Very good forum featuring subforums for all minecraft platforms (pc, xbox, java edition, playstation etc.)

🇬🇧/🇺🇲 The Bell Tree - Animal Crossing related forum, features a subforum for discussions about Nintendo games and acts as a hub for trading and meeting New Horizons players online.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 GBATemp - A gaming forum, with a focus on video game modding, homebrew, and hacking.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Romhacking dot Net forums - A forum for general game romhacking.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Planet Minecraft - Unofficial Minecraft forum focused on creating skins and datapacks for others to enjoy. Userbase skews younger.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Minecraft Forum - Once official, but now unofficial Minecraft forum. Minecraft is a voxel-based sandbox game, and needs no introduction.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Sims 4 Studio - A forum for Sims 4 modding tool Sims 4 Studio. Contains discussions, tutorials, and showcases of Sims modding.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Vintage Story Forums - Official Vintage Story forum. Vintage Story is a voxel-based sandbox survival game inspired by and often compared to Minecraft. The forums focus on discussion of the game, including storytelling and modding.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Mario Boards - Unofficial discussion of the Super Mario franchise, and general gaming discussion.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 No Homer’s Club - Unofficial The Simpsons fan forum.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Duke4 - Unofficial Duke Nukem fan forum.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Deltarune Unofficial Message Boards - Unofficial Undertale and Deltarune fan forum.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Larian Studios Forum - Official Larian forum. Larian are the developers of videogames like the Divinity series and Balder’s Gate 3.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Bay 12 Games Forum - Official forum for Bay 12 Games, mostly focused on their best-known title, Dwarf Fortress. Storytelling with Dwarf Fortress is a particular interest members have.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Adventure Game Hotspot Forum - Adventure game fan forum. Spiritual successor to the now defunct Adventure Gamers forum, if you remember that one. For all adventure games old and new, but I won’t lie the userbase skews mostly towards old 80s/90s Sierra and Lucasarts adventure games.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Mix ‘n’ Mojo - Another adventure game fan forum, focused on 80’s/90’s LucasArts games like Monkey Island, Sam and Max, and the Indiana Jones adventure games.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Dragon’s Den - Unofficial Dragon Quest fan forum.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 StarmenNet forums - Forums for the unofficial Earthbound fansite Starmen, which contain discussions of those games. Also hosts an official Undertale section

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Terraria Community Forums | Official forum for the game Terraria and tModLoader.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Dragon Cave Forums - Official forums for Dragon Cave, an online adoptables game. Collect eggs, raise them to adulthood, and then breed them to cre­ate interesting lineages. New dragons are added regularly!

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 RaymanPC - Forum for Rayman PC content and discussion.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 UESP forum - Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages forum; everything about the TES series.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 ModTheSims - Sims modding and discussion for all chapters.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 TheSimsInUA - Ukrainian Sims forum.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 MedievalSims forum - Forum about Sims: Medieval.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 whiskerwick - The go-to forum for the petz community—updates, gameplay, support, and fan projects.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 the Deltarune Unofficial Message Boards - Fan forum for Deltarune and Undertale, focused on discussion, theories, and community posts.

Retro gaming related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 RetroGameTalk - Retro gaming discussion forums.

Modding related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Tropicomodding - Forum for modding games from the Tropico series (4, 5 & 6) mod installation instructions, game conversions. Offers Modloader & Ressourcemanager

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Nexus Mods Forum - Active forum. Mainly focused on mods / modlaunchers hosted on nexusmods but has a decent articles and guides subforum for modding games yourself. There also is a sub called modding academy and you can share and discuss ideas for mods and even request mods. I personally don't like nexusmods for its focus on their vortex modlauncher. I prefer to copy files manually, create directories myself but still, this forum has something to offer.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 ModDB Forum - Semi active forum. Topics are modding related, 3D modelling, animation, engine programming, level design, sound design. While being not as active as nexus mods forum, moddb forum has a lot of pearls and a lot of knowledge to share with everyone who dares to dig a little deeper. Still a great info resource. Would love to see this forum revitalize because moddb has been an instance for years and was very active before a lot of people went to nexus instead. Don't know why.

Game development related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 RPG Maker Web Forums - Official forum for the RPG Maker series of software. Contains discussion of RPG Maker gamedev, and free assets for devs to use.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 TIGForums - Independent game development community with long-running general discussions, devlogs, and projects.

ROM Hacking / Speedrun / TAS related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 SMW Central Forum - Forum for Super Mario World Central, a romhacking site. You can find romhacks tutorials resources u know the stuff.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 TASVideos Forum - Forum for TASVideos, a form of videogame superplay using emulator tools. Each game has its own megathread where users post new discoveries and WIP TASes.

Hacking related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Hack Forums - Blackhat, Greyhat, Whitehat... jailbreaking, network intrusion, website hacking, trojans, malware.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 0x00sec Forums - Temporarily down

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Altenens - Very active forum about hacking, cracking, remote administration & cybersecurity

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Hak5 - Forum administrated by hak5, inventors of rubberducky, o.m.g. cable, wifi pineapple and wifi coconut

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Zsecurity - Smaller forum, needs more activity

Cheating / Hacking in Videogames related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Unknowncheats.me - Cheating related forum for single & multiplayer hacking, game development, engine programming

Roleplaying related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Iwaku role play! - Iwaku is Japanese for Story. The main focus of this community is role playing. The site was started by a bunch of Role player’s from many different role playing sites to create a new and active playground.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Gaia Online - A long running general/anime/roleplay forum where users create their own character with items purchased from their virtual shop.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Recolor Me - Similar avatar/customization and community structure inspired by Gaia-style roleplay culture.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 WCRPForums - A roleplay forum community with multiple settings and active discussion.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Chosen of Starclan - A Warriors fan community and roleplay forum set in the StarClan universe.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Warrior Cats Online - A Warriors-focused forum for roleplay, fan discussion, and community activities.

Miniature wargaming related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 DakkaDakka - Active Warhammer, Warmachine and Flames of War related forum.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Specialist Arms - Semi active wargaming forum

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 YakTribe.games - a community for miniature and board games with a focus on offering tools for creating and managing Necromunda gangs, campaigns & battles. A good place to discuss about modelling, painting & terrain creation.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Chaos Dwarfs Online - Considers itself as the world’s largest and most committed fan group for everything related to Chaos Dwarfs, Helsmiths of Hashut, Infernal Dwarfs, Abyssal Dwarfs & co.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Serebii dot net Forums - Another Pokemon discussion forum that has also been around for at least a decade

Science Fiction related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 SFFChronicles - Very active forum. It has everything from book to gaming discussions, a busy movie section. This forum is the brainchild of fantasy writer Brian Turner btw.

Anime & Manga related fan forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Pokemon Community Forums - Official Pokemon forum. Skews young, with strict moderation which only lets you discuss official Pokemon products in an all-ages corporate friendly way. If you can live with this, its a fine place for official Pokemon related discussion.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Pokecommunity - Unofficial Pokemon fan forum, with general Pokemon discussion and a strong romhacking community.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Seribii dot Net Forums - Unofficial Pokemon fan forum, which is general but ends up leaning towards game guides and Pokemon anime discussion.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Eevee Expo - Pokemon fan game forum, focusing on a suite of tools called Pokemon Essentials. Unofficial to the Pokemon franchise, but official to the Pokemon Essentials dev team.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Poliwager - A forum centered on Pokemon and related virtual pets

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Kanzenshuu the Forum - Dragon Ball Z franchise fan forum. I only know it as the home of high-effort anime fan cuts, but it probably has other things going for it, somebody else write the blurb.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Ace Attorney Online - Ace Attorney fan forum dedicated to the eponymous fancase maker Ace Attorney Online. Lots of fan game discussion, not so much source material discussion. Has boards for French, Spanish, and Dutch speakers, but those are significantly less active than the English language boards.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 The LifeStream - Unofficial Final Fantasy VII forum.

Franchise related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Startrek.website forum - A forum for fans of Star Trek and/or Doctor Who.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 TFW2005’s Boards - Forum that is all about the Transformers franchise, and has been around AND still active since 2003.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Animesuki - Old anime forum with still some activity.

Book and ebook related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 MobileRead - very active forum, for ebooks, ebook readers, ebook software, creating ebooks, etc.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 LibraryThing - very active forum for everything books.

Hobby related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 FSUniverse - Figure skating discussion.

Aquaristic related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Fishlore - Saltwater and freshwater aquarium fish discussion.

Eco & Permaculture related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Permies - Permaculture and sustainable living community forum.

Health & personal care related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 SkinCareTalk - Skincare products discussion community (popular before Reddit dominated in the 2010s).

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Long Hair Community - Long-running, active, kind community (since ~2003).

Cannabis related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Mr. Nice Forum - A cultivated place to discuss about cultivating cannabis, cannabis genetics and strain related topics. Led by one of the most influential and trustworthy characters in the Netherlands cannabis scene, Shantibaba.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 ICMAG - Quality cannabis forum, advanced topics are discussed here, still beginner friendly community

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Grasscity - One of the largest cannabis & weed forums.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 420 Magazine Forums - Active forum about cannabis use and cultivation

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 ILGM - Semi-active forum for growers

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Growers Network Forum - Semi-active forum for professional weed growers

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Grow Weed Easy Forum - Semi active growers forum

🇬🇧 uk420 - Active british weed growing community

Scene specific forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 VampFreaks - A goth, alternative, and underground community forum for connecting, sharing dark aesthetics, and discussing music, art, and more.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 HorrorForum - Horror-focused forum for discussion.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 CritterTime - Furries, Queer, Retro Community forum.

Audio & HiFi related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Audio Science Review - A forum that prides itself on objective, scientific analysis of speakers, amplifiers, and home audio equipment.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Super Audio Best Friends - Another audio forum for HiFi enthusiasts.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Audiogon - A well-known, reliable audio forum.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Audiokarma - A forum focused on discussions about old speakers, with unique information not found elsewhere.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Head-fi - The best forum for everything involving headphones, highly respected in the audiophile community.

Audio Equipment & DIY projects

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 diyAudio - Do it yourself ressource for making speakers, PA Systems, amplifiers and much more audio related stuff.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Midwest audio club - A community for people who build their own speakers. Will relaunch this september (possibly octobre) using Discourse as new forum software.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 GroupDIY - Originated from a facebook group this forum is about discussing and sharing knowledge about how to build and use audio stuff, microphones, preamps, processors, mixers.

Professional Audio equipment & Recording

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Gearspace Board from discussions about equipment to mastering mixes, field recording, musical instruments and music production in general. Live sound, stage lighting. You name it.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 TapeOp Great community for everything recording related. How to record bass drums, how to record guitar riffs. Discussion about microphone setups and recording devices included.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 TASCAM - Fieldrecorders, audio interfaces, digital compact studios, portastudios. Mainly Tascam devices are discussed here

Forum related forums (Forum Software, Hosting, Admintalk)

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Vanilla OSS support forum

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Discourse Meta - An support forum for the Discourse forums software.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Proboards Support - The support forum of forum hosting provider Proboards.

Browser related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Vivaldi Community - Official forum for the Vivaldi web browser.

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Firefox Support Forum - Official forum for the Firefox web browser.

Drug related forums

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Bluelight - One of the biggest drug related forums about all drugs and research chemicals

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Shroomery - Very old but still active forum about magic mushroom cultivation and culinary mushroom cultivation as well

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Drugs Forum - Old and well structured forum about drugs and drug usage

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 - Dope Talk - Semi active forum about drugs and drug culture

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 RXchat - Prescription drug experiences, abuse included

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Substance Abuse Disorder Forum - For people with problematic usage patterns 🐦‍🔥

🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Poppers Forum - For anythingg Amylnitrite lovers,Isopropyl nitrite, Isobutyl nitrite related

City development & architecture related forums

About creating/running/ hosting your own forum

Forum Software

• phpBB
• Discourse
• MyBB
• Simple Machines Forum
• FUDforum
• WoltLab Suite Core
• Syndie
• bbPress
• Beehive Forum
• FluxBB
• PunBB
• Phorum
• Vanilla OSS

• Discuz $
• Invision Power Board $
• XenForo $
• vBulletin $

• Ikonboard

Specialized Forum hosting services

I would encourage anyone to host their own forum because once a forum hosting service shuts down, the data is probably lost. Has happened a lot of times in the past and by hosting a forum yourself you can do regular backups the forum contents. It is as easy as uploading some files, creating an admin account, changing database user/pw in a textbased config file and running an install script in most cases. This way you own the data and have full control (customization, plug-ins, superadmin powers) but for anyone who wants to rely on a hosted service, here are some that are worth of being mentioned.

• Freeboards offers ad-free forum hosting. The only specialized free forum hosting provider with a No Ads/Banner Free policy.
• Pro Boards Since nearly 15 years proboards is hosting forums for free. A paid membership is needed to disable the ads.
• Forumotion offers free forum hosting for over 10 years and lets users choose which forum software will be in use. Choices are: ModernBB, phpBB3, phpBB2, punBB and Invision.

Plugins & Addons make forums even greater.

By using plugins & add-ons, forum admins can turn their forums into full-fledged blogging platforms, image hubs, tutorial exchanges, and marketplaces.

About archiving and downloading forum content

How to dump complete forums

While wget is a powerful tool, it doesn't work properly when trying to dump modern forums that make use of strings and parameters like viewtopic?p=123 etc. Wget does as well have problems with some themes and the usage of relative paths inside the forum software / theme templates. You can make wget work perfectly fine if you have the means to do so. In a lot of cases, you would have to do some sort of post processing and manually (or batch-edit) the files.

httrack "http://FORUM-DOMAIN-REPLACE-THIS.com" -O "/local/forum-revival-forums" \
"+*.example.com/*" \
"-*logout*" \
"--mirror" \
"--keep-links" \
"--assume php" \
"--depth=6" \
"--robots=0" \
"--clean" \
"--wait=2" \
"--random" \
"--max-connections=3" \
"--max-size=10M"

This command will work with the commandline version of Httrack which is included with most of the packages offered in the downloads section of the Httrack website.

By using this command your computer will wait between 2 and 4 seconds between each request so that you won't get blocked by the server. Wait=2 tells Httrack to wait 2 seconds before sending a new request to the server while --random adds some randomness, making it anything from 2 to 4 seconds between requests. Depth=6 specifies that Httrack will follow all links that are at max 6 clicks away from the starting page. This should be sufficient to download images, attachments etc even in larger forums that contain many subforums. You can increase the depth easily. Depending on the server settings, --max-connections=3 can be too lax or too strict. So find the sweet spot between downloading multiple files at once and getting blocked. The --max-size=10M specifies that no files bigger than 10 Megabyte should be downloaded.

This command will result in all urls matching "logout" being excluded from getting fetched. This means you can possibly lose threads if the forum makes use of URL rewriting (topic of the thread appears in the url instead of viewtopic.php=123 being used for example). If a user has posted a thread named "Why can't I logout of my spotify account anymore" this thread will not get fetched by using the example command above. This is to prevent getting logged out when using Httrack in combination with cookies to stay logged-in to an account. This has to be done if the forum contents aren't available to the public. If you don't have to stay logged-in to fetch the forum, just remove the row "-*logout*" \ and run the command without it.

Sometimes you need to be logged-in in order to access the forum, specific subforums or file attachments. In order to get these, you should log-in to your useraccount of the forum and then extract the cookie. If you run into problems figuring it out, check the reference.

This is how it is done in general:

1. Login to your website using Firefox or Chrome, then take a look at the login cookie.
2. In the root of the folder where you are downloading your website open the file named cookies.txt or if it's not there just create one and open it.
3. Copy the login cookie from your browser to this file.
(You can also copy multiple cookies if you don't know exactly which one is used for login. Some websites can have a lot of cookies with confusing names that all look like a login hash.)

Then run this command

httrack "http://FORUM-DOMAIN-REPLACE-THIS.com" - b0 -O "/local/forum-revival-forums" \
"+*.example.com/*" \
"-*logout*" \
"--mirror" \
"--keep-links" \
"--assume php" \
"--depth=6" \
"--robots=0" \
"--clean" \
"--wait=2" \
"--random" \
"--max-connections=3" \
"--max-size=10M"

• Archive-Box - All-in-one solution to scrape, archive and read webpages. The archives made with ArchiveBox can be locally accessed and accessed over internet or lan as well. Tested and approved.
• Grab-Site works kind of well when used with --no-offsite-links & --igsets forums (Forum ignore set) grabs whole forums and saves them as WARC files which can be viewed by using WARC readers.
• Forum-DL - Latest release 2023. Untested
• Forum-Scraper - 2024. Untested
• Xana Forum Scraper - 2020. Untested.