Modern BBS software for the people who remember when forums were forums. Born from rebuilding spring.com — an Austin BBS that ran 1996–2014 — from the Wayback Machine. Yapp-inspired, archive-aware, no algorithm, no ads, verified email + optional phone.
ATXbbs (pronounced "A-T-X B-B-S") is a web-based conferencing platform — a modern descendant of PicoSpan (which ran The WELL) and Yapp (which ran spring.com 1996–2014). It's built specifically to do something neither of those could: resurrect a long-dead BBS from its Wayback Machine archives, then let modern visitors post on top of it.
Reconstruct any yapp-era BBS from Wayback. Each topic gets a static page; each post-2026 reply lands underneath the original 1998 conversation.
Yapp's three-tier model. Not "channels" or "threads" or "posts" — the language the original BBS cohort speaks.
Email when someone replies to a topic you've participated in. Per-user opt-out. One-click unsubscribe in every email.
Handle + password, that's it. Email optional (used only for password reset + reply notifications if you want them).
Admin queue for spam. Posts are never hard-deleted — flagged + hidden, undoable. Audit trail by design.
Per-conference, all-activity firehose, eventually per-thread. Subscribe to a topic without an account.
What's new since you left. Last 50 / 100 / 333 / 500 (yapp's pulse view). Member count, daily new posts, all on the homepage.
Built to live alongside other community sites. Auto-injects banner cross-links between thematic conferences and their reference sites.
language Python 3.12
web Flask + Jinja2 + gunicorn (single-worker on a $6/mo droplet)
db SQLite (single file, b2 nightly snapshot)
templates Static HTML for archive (1,000s of pages, served by nginx)
Dynamic Flask for live conferences + auth
email Resend HTTPS API (DigitalOcean blocks SMTP)
backup B2 (nightly sync + 30-day dated snapshots)
deploy systemd unit, cron-managed, SSH-only
total LoC ~2,500 (Python) + ~1,500 (templates + CSS)v0.1 · public preview · 2026-04-19. ATXbbs is in active soft-launch ahead of the May 1, 2026 official launch of austinspring.com. The reference implementation is the canonical "what does this software do." Source release coming once the API surface stabilizes.