Welcome

This is the Wiki for everything related to Synchronet BBS Software.

Not sure what a BBS is?

• Videos:
  1. Lon.TV: Retro Review - Computer Bulletin Board ( BBS ) Systems
  2. VICE: The Lost Art of Warez
  3. 34C3: BBSs and early Internet access in the 1990ies
  4. Al's Geek Lab: Back to the BBS
  5. The Computer Chronicles - Modems & Bulletin Boards (1985)
  6. Hackfest 2024 - aNACHRONiST - Bulletin Board Systems in the Modern Era and Beyond
• Articles:
  1. The Atlantic: The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems
  2. How-to Geek: Remember BBSes? Here’s How You Can Visit One Today
  3. digital man: Why BBS?

Synchronet BBS Software is a free software package that can turn your personal or hosted computer (or computing device, e.g. Raspberry Pi) into your own custom online service supporting multiple simultaneous users with hierarchical message and file areas, multi-user chat, and the ever-popular BBS door games.

Synchronet development began as a personal hobby in 1990 for single-tasking MS-DOS compatible computers and Hayes-compatible phone modems. The program was sold commercially from 1992 to 1996 after which time it was released (with source code) for both the 16-bit DOS and 32-bit OS/2 platforms to the public domain and development by the author was paused.

In November of 1999, the author found a renewed interest in further developing Synchronet, specifically for the Internet community, embracing and integrating standard Internet protocols such as Telnet, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IRC, NNTP, and HTTP. Synchronet has since been substantially redesigned as an Internet BBS package for modern computing platforms and is an Open Source project under continuous development.

Synchronet Version 3 for Windows and Unix-like OSes is available for download here and can be previewed on Vertrauen (Home of Synchronet BBS Software).

• Created (by digital man) in February of 2010
• Powered by DokuWiki and PHP
• Hosted on Vertrauen
  • Yes, the Synchronet Web Server can host PHP pages
  • This wiki was transitioned to Synchronet-Linux from Apache-Linux in Nov-2015 after the addition of FastCGI support to the Synchronet Web Server (by Deuce)!
  • digital man is in the process of importing and updating the existing Synchronet documentation into this Wiki
  • This is a major task that is going to take some time, please be patient
• If you'd like to contribute, please create an account (on Vertrauen) and see the Wiki stuff section for Best Practices, help on syntax, etc.