Online forums have come a long way over the years, but some communities continue to thrive by focusing on meaningful discussion and genuine connections. Today, we’re joined by Kyng, the administrator of The Coffee House, to talk about his journey through forum culture, his experiences with MyBB, and his thoughts on the future of online communities.

1. How did you first get involved with online forums, and what drew you to create or manage The Coffee House?

It actually started more or less ‘by accident’ in late 2000. I was an avid fan of Digimon at the time: after school, I would always watch it on CITV. But then, with 14 episodes of the first series still to go, CITV stopped showing it without warning. I was so irate that I went onto their forums, and started a topic just to complain. But, once I was there, I found myself participating in discussions about my other favourite shows – and I stuck around.

The Coffee House, of course, didn’t start until almost a decade later. At that point, I’d been running a chess forum for almost five years, but it had essentially run out of momentum: nobody was talking about chess, and even the general parts of the forum were dying. And my girlfriend at the time, Detective Osprey, had the same problem with her own forum. So, we decided to join forces and create general forum – one loosely based on science and other intellectual topics. Initially, this had the name “Imperial Forum”, but this was considered too uptight – and in less than a year, it changed to the more friendly and inviting name “The Coffee House”.

2. Could you share some of your past forum experience before starting The Coffee House?

What really got me into forums was when I signed up on BZPower (a fan site for LEGO’s Bionicle range), in 2002. While CITV’s forum was my first introduction to the medium, it was quite limited: core audience was children, so every post had to be read by moderators before it actually appeared (so, my posts would often take hours to show up). By contrast, BZPower was a very different experience: it was a little more ‘mature’ (still aimed at children but mostly older children), and posts appeared instantly. I stuck around there for several years – and ultimately served as a staff member there for about three years, from 2006 to 2009. But by then, I was already running my own forum!

The beginning of my “forum admin” journey came in 2004, when I learned HTML, and created my own basic chess website with it. Of course I wasn’t coding my own forum software or anything – but, I decided it would be nice for my site to have a forum attached to it. I tried several platforms, but ultimately settled on InvisionFree (later ZetaBoards). With hindsight, a chess-focused forum probably wasn’t a great idea: I didn’t know enough about chess at the time to make it work, so it was mostly just me and my non-chess friends engaging in general discussions. But we did have plenty of fun!

3. What initially inspired the theme and community focus of The Coffee House?

As noted in my answer to the first question, ‘The Coffee House’ wasn’t the board’s original name. Furthermore, even after agreeing that ‘Imperial Forum’ was too uptight, we weren’t immediately agreed on what should replace it! One suggestion was ‘ZetaSynthesis’ – which we actually started creating a purple and white theme and graphics for – but this fell by the wayside, as it wasn’t felt to be descriptive enough. Another suggestion was ‘Net Cafe’, which didn’t get too far, as it suggested we were more tech-focused than we actually were. In the end, the suggestion of ‘The Coffee House’ won out: to our members, it encapsulated the vibe of “thoughtful but informal meeting place” that we were going for.

Of course, each of these names has an alternate history associated with it, where our community adopted that name and went off in a different direction as a result 😛 . But, I am glad we went the direction we did. By this time (late 2010), I was tiring of the “hornet’s nest” atmosphere that permeated social media: I still enjoyed intellectual discussions, but I didn’t enjoy the mudslinging that often accompanied them on places like Facebook. So I decided the main focus of the newly-renamed Coffee House should be on creating an intellectual space that provided an escape from that atmosphere!

4. How do you feel about MyBB as a forum platform, and what are its strengths and weaknesses in your experience?

I think, coming from ZetaBoards, it was the right decision for us at the time we started in 2018. Compared to ZB, it was quite similar in the way it worked and was laid out, so it didn’t take too long for us to learn our way around it (only about a month), whilst still being powerful enough to feel like a significant upgrade over ZB. Sure, there was more powerful software even back then (like XenForo) – but, going with that would’ve probably slowed down our move away from ZB significantly, as we would’ve had to re-learn quite a bit more. And another important advantage, of course, is that it’s free 😛 . Not everyone can afford an expensive licence for a premium software system (or can justify buying one for a small hobby forum) – and even though I would have been able to afford it, the last thing I wanted to do was spend over £100 on a XenForo licence, and then find out halfway through building my XenForo forum that the software was a bad fit for my requirements (the 3-day free trial wasn’t really long enough to answer this question for us!).

I think the biggest weakness of MyBB is, as everyone else says, that it’s not responsive out of the box. At a time when ~60% of global internet traffic comes from mobile devices, a mobile-friendly default theme is essential unless you happen to know your target audience is browsing mostly from desktop. Fortunately, MyBB does have a number of custom responsive themes that you can use – some of which (like BootBB Reloaded) are released under permissive licenses that allow you to use them as a base for your own theme!

5. What are your thoughts on the proposed MyBB 1.9 update? Are there features you’re excited about or concerned with?

Well, the main thing, of course, is the responsive default theme 😛 . Like I said in my answer to the previous question, I think that’s badly needed. Of course, we’d want to convert our current default theme (and a few of our other more popular themes, like Golden Night and Citrus Crush) to MyBB 1.9, which would take a while, but it’d be fun!

I suppose the main unknowns are: a) when will it arrive? (I was hoping it would’ve long since come out by now), and b) how many plugins will be converted to work with it? Due to the complete overhaul of the template system, it’s inevitable that most (if not all) plugins will be broken – and, it would be quite a pain to lose the ones we use. So, I do hope at least some of the more important ones will be converted to MyBB 1.9 (or integrated into vanilla MyBB at some point).

6. Do you foresee ever moving The Coffee House to a different forum software, or do you plan to stay with MyBB long-term?

As of right now, a move to another forum software isn’t on our radar. Our previous move (from ZetaBoards to MyBB back in 2018) took us a month: we wanted to rebuild as much of our existing setup as we could before we opened the MyBB forum (the idea being that, although it was never going to feel like home on its opening day, it would at least feel like a house, and not a construction site). Furthermore, we wanted to understand exactly how MyBB worked before we actually brought members over there: we didn’t want to do all our learning in public. That move worked out well for us, but it was painful, because our eight and a half year’s worth of topics and posts couldn’t come along with us. Nevertheless, the decision became an easy one when I realised it was “Lose our history, or lose our future”.

I imagine any hypothetical move away from MyBB would follow the same pattern. There may well come a time when MyBB ceases to be a viable option, and we end up having to make another of those moves. But in spite of its limitations, we are making MyBB work for us at the moment – and we plan to carry on doing so for the foreseeable future.

7. How do you approach moderation and community engagement on TCH to keep discussions friendly and active?

What we aim for is to strike a balance where we’re firm enough to ensure that troublemakers are dealt with before they can cause much trouble – but loose enough to ensure that everyone else still feels comfortable talking about the things that are important to them. It’s not an easy balance to strike, of course (and to get there, we’ve had to go through periods of getting it wrong in one direction, then overcorrecting in the other direction), but we’ve done our best to learn from those past mistakes!

I think one thing that helps is that we have staff from a fairly broad range of backgrounds and political persuasions. This helps to stop the moderation from getting too biased in any one direction (of course, over the years, we’ve had our fair share of left-wing members accusing us of right-wing bias, and right-wing members accusing us of left-wing bias, but I suppose that comes with the territory!)

8. What has been the most rewarding part of running The Coffee House?

This is the easiest question of the bunch: all the wonderful people I’ve met along the way! In particular, I met my girlfriend of almost five years through TCH (we still haven’t moved in together, but one day!) – and, I’ve formed a number of long-term friendships (including some with people I’ve met up with in real life since getting to know them online).

Of course, many of the discussions themselves, and the new things I’ve learned from them (about everything from science to history to sports to gaming) have been rewarding as well. But that’ll always be second to the friendships and relationships formed!

9. Are there any challenges you’ve faced running a forum that you didn’t anticipate when you started?

Quite a lot: I was operating in a very different world when TCH started on ZetaBoards in 2009. Social media was on the rise (but hadn’t yet taken over); mobile browsing was in its infancy (I’d certainly never attempted to browse a forum on a phone before); and AI as we know it today wasn’t on anybody’s mind at all! Each of those has presented its own challenges, that we’ve had to adapt to.

However, I’d say the biggest challenge I didn’t anticipate was self-hosting. Back when I started, I was still at university, and didn’t have a job – so, free hosted solutions (like ZetaBoards) were very attractive to me. But, when ZetaBoards closed, and we had to move elsewhere without being able to bring our old topics/posts with us… we decided having control over our data was imperative. Thus, we went with self-hosting, which gave us a much greater degree of freedom – but also far greater responsibility (both on the legal and technical side). Fortunately, working as a software developer meant I was up to the technical challenges – but even so, it’s been quite a learning experience: there have been days when I’ve spent more time messing around on CloudFlare than actually posting on my forum. Not many days, thankfully – but they have certainly happened!

10. Outside of forum management, what are some of your hobbies or interests?

Railways have always been a major one, as I’m sure everyone on TCH knows by now 😛 . I’m not entirely certain where this originated from: I think Thomas the Tank Engine planted the seed early in childhood, but what really ignited the flame was a couple of successful trips to railway-themed tourist attractions when I was 10 or 11, and then getting Railroad Tycoon II for my 12th birthday. And from there, I got into model railways, which I must have spent an obscene amount of money on over the years!

I’m also into various sports. Formula One is my main sport: I’ve been following it for… checks… wow, almost 30 years now: I started watching in 1997. After that, my second- and third-favourite sports would probably be tennis and snooker: I’m less into football, but I’ll happily support my national team!

Finally, chess (which, no, I don’t consider a sport, hence why I didn’t list it above 😛 ). What amazes me about that game is, the more I know about it, the more I realise I don’t know: even after breaking into the 1600s on Chess.com last year, I’m still finding new and innovative ways to lose all my pieces!

11. How do you balance your personal life with the responsibilities of managing an online community?

Honestly, this is something I’ve often struggled with in the past 😆 .

I’ve found that, if I don’t set clear limits for myself, then forum management gradually becomes all-consuming. This was what happened to me in 2021: I unwittingly allowed TCH to take up more and more of my time – until practically all of my day was taken up by TCH, work, or sleep. Naturally, this wasn’t sustainable – and, towards the end of the year, I got burnt out. I then spent 3 weeks away from the forum to recover – but, when I came back, I didn’t immediately revert to my old activity patterns: I started making just a few posts a day, and gradually built up from there until I found the highest level I thought I could sustain long-term.

Even so, during more intense times, I do still get close to burning out. I think the rest of the staff do a good job of spotting this, and telling me when I’m getting too close to the edge!

12. Have you ever participated in other types of online communities or social media platforms, and how do they compare to forums?

Yes, I’ve used most of the others – but, compared to forums, I’ve always found them to be lacking in some way. Social networks like Facebook are very efficient at delivering content, but they have zero sense of community. Discord does have the sense of community, but it prioritises chatter and small talk over long-form content with long-term value (and in larger servers, I find it hard to keep up). Reddit is probably the most forum-like of the social media platforms, but most of the subreddits I’ve been on have been echo chambers (probably because the upvote/downvote mechanic leads to dissenting voices getting downvoted into oblivion). And Twitter (and its clones, like Threads and Bluesky)… ugh, don’t get me started. In my opinion, microblogging might just be the worst form of communication ever invented.

In truth, I’m not 100% sure whether I’ve stuck with forums because they offer what I want, or if it’s the other way around (i.e. my tastes have been shaped by spending my formative online years on forums 😛 ). But I don’t think it’s purely the latter: if I didn’t enjoy forums as a child, I’d probably never have got into online communities to begin with, and would’ve just read or played games or something!

13. Are there any plans for new features or expansions on TCH in the near future?

Sadly, due to work being busy (I’ve had to work quite a lot of overtime lately), this is something I haven’t had much of a chance to think about in recent months. But, I do have some idea of what we’ll be working on next.

First of all, the new default theme we introduced at the end of last year (Grand Café) has been very well-received by our members, so we are planning to introduce a second variant of that with some darker colours. Secondly, we’ll likely make some tweaks to our forum layout in the not-too-distant future, to replace parts that aren’t aren’t getting the traffic that they once were with something fresher that better serves the members we have now.

Finally, I might also look into adding a few more games to our arcade. Yes, I know these are old-fashioned, but it’s something that quite a few of our long-term members are nostalgic about, so I think it’s still worth us keeping it going!

14. How do you see the future of online forums evolving, and where does TCH fit in that landscape?

I guess the main question is: what space are they going to occupy relative to their competitors, like social media and Discord? Do they become more like those platforms, in order to try and compete with them for the same audience? Or do they try to differentiate themselves from those platforms (because, as popular as they are, they certainly aren’t to everyone’s tastes – and there is an audience out there that explicitly wants something different!). Personally, I would place TCH in the latter camp; however, I would also like to see a good attempt at the former.

One thing I do see a lot of on forum admin spaces is talk about “forums are dying because social media”. But, while forums have unquestionably diminished in popularity since 15 or 20 years ago, I definitely don’t think they’re dead and buried forever. I do sometimes see social media users saying “I miss forums”: as I alluded to in my answer to question #12, they offer a unique combination of “long-form content + community atmosphere” that’s hard to find elsewhere. It’s not a combination that works naturally on current smartphones (where it’s a poor fit for their small, fixed-sized screens), but the market for the combination itself never went away. Perhaps whatever comes next (whether we move to larger, folding screens, or move away from physical screens entirely) will create an opening for longer-form, “forum-like” discussion spaces to make a comeback – though it’s hard to predict exactly what they’ll look like!

15. Finally, what advice would you give to someone who’s thinking about starting their own forum today?

The single most important piece of advice I would give is: be clear on what your goal is – and stick to it.

There are several reasons for this. First of all, it helps you attract the right kinds of members to make your community thrive. Secondly, it helps with suggestions. Different people will suggest different things – many of them good ideas in isolation, but not all of them will fit your vision. Finally, it helps with motivation and direction.

Your goal doesn’t have to stay fixed forever, but having one is essential. Without it, it’s easy to lose direction and struggle to build something meaningful.

Final Thoughts

Kyng’s journey is a great reminder that forums are far from dead—they’ve simply evolved. While social media dominates the modern internet, communities like The Coffee House show there’s still a strong demand for thoughtful, long-form discussion and genuine interaction.

If anything, forums may not just survive—they might be perfectly positioned for a comeback.