Like Lazarus, TEDEX has arisen from the dead. But Jesus wasn’t involved this time. Just a friend of mine named James. Named after the brother of Jesus, perhaps. But there are several James in the scriptures…
In any case, TEDEX was a BBS forum I created and operated on the Internet for several years when I first got into machine shop hobby work. It had between 50 and 100 members that contributed.
But after a few years, the spammers and “spoilers” decided to harass the forum with no end in sight. It wasn’t worth the aggravation constantly “cleaning house” from the debris these morons thought was fun to deposit on site.
I shut the TEDEX forum down and switched to private website publishing with no “membership” permitted. The vermin didn’t go away, but it was much harder for them to play their game.
But friend James (Jim) got me back to playing with what has now become phpBB3, a much more robust BBS forum than what was certainly version 1, the original TEDEX platform.
I totally despise the FaceBook BBS forums with its invasive tracking and marketing. I visit a few forums because they choose to be there, but will never-ever use FaceBook for my own needs.
phpBB3 provides the same participation and opportunity for visitors to contribute and share information on specific topics. phpBB3 is the epitome of what a BBS should be and has become the basis of thousands of sites.
TEDEX, at this point has no specific mission. It’s an experiment and an education process for me. It’s “backend administration” is very detailed and complex. Much more than my original TEDEX. A steep learning curve.
Take a look if you are curious about what a BBS/forum is like that will not exploit your visitation by tracking your every click. It just does what it is supposed to do without making a profit selling your personal viewing information.
DISCLAIMER
There is one optional phpBB3 feature, VigLink, that funds the development of phpBB3. If a link to a commercial business is followed that results in a purchase, a slight “lead finders fee” is (somehow) paid by the merchant. I have no idea how it works. It claims it does not gather personal user information or have any effect on cost. Certainly must be an existing agreement with merchants who participate.
VigLink is third-party service that discretely monetises links posted by users of the forum without any change to the user experience. When users click on outbound links to products or services and buy something, the merchants pay VigLink a commission, of which a share is donated to the phpBB project.
TEDEX is NOT a commercial website intended to provide links to established commercial merchants for anyone’s profit. So the VigLink feature is definable NOT enabled in TEDEX. Like I have stated: “No tracking here.”
Pop over to TEDEX and take a look.