I remember CPanel and having to set up Wordpress installations or using it to create MySQL databases and install phpmyadmin + setup FTP accounts so I could deploy PHP applications I had written myself. I got into programming during this era to create a website for my uncles store and “share” his hosting to run a forum I built dedicated to Ocarina of Time.

I definitely look at those days with rose tinted glasses and had basically forgotten about the time before I used VPSs and knew enough of bash and Linux to set all these things up myself. And even that was quite awhile ago now I write frontend and back ends and deploy them to AWS or Heroku. I guess it just shows how much the web has changed and matured compared to using shared hosting from websites that only a few hundred people max used.

This thread is a giant bucket of nostalgia for me and I’m not even 30 yet. Crazy to imagine what the web will be like when I’m 50 longing for the days of React and Flask.

For those who were not around that long, here's a brief summary from the b2evolution site https://b2evolution.net/about/b2evolution-vs-wordpress

I haven't been around the open source CMS world this long, I only started with Drupal 17 years ago (to the day as of yesterday) https://i.imgur.com/TsNTYqZ.png

I personally think it’s cool you got to see all that in real time OG :)