Igloo Cafe BBS

GeckoF

Sysoperator

From: Antarctica

Registered: September 18, 2020

Website

Thinking about hosting a Hotline server

For those who don't know what Hotline is, it was basically a sort of "protocol" which combined downloads, chat, and Usenet-style newsgroups into one application and easy to host (in short, a kind of BBS in "modern times"). It used to be used a lot in the Macintosh era for software downloads mainly. It also had a "tracker" function which was somewhat similar to a master server list in a multiplayer videogame, which listed all available Hotline servers along with a description and number of users.

I remember using it for the first time in 2022 on my Windows Me VM as I used to see it a lot on the ALTEXXANET website. Just today out of curiosity, while bored, I decided to go back to using that Windows Me VM until I found that I still had the Hotline Connect client installed, so I decided to go back and explore a bit.

I was thinking about hosting a Hotline server for the community, as a small alternative to our website and Gopher for old computers (and also to mirror stuff like our BBS Newsletter posts and some downloads), but I feel like I'm already hosting too much stuff and I don't think it's worth it (because I'll most likely end up forgetting that I'm still hosting this as well as many).

What do you think? Is it worth even trying?

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