If the above looks vaguely familiar, you were probably a user, member or lurker on The Swansea Surf Page Noticeboard (aka The SSB)
sometime between February 1995 and June 2023.
How it all began -February 1995
This anarchic, often chaotic and light touch moderation incarnation of The SSB is sadly no more.
Increased hosting costs due to obsolete coding, dwindling membership, the growth of alternative social media platforms, and changing sensibilities re privacy and message board content mean that it is no longer sensible for The SSB to keep chugging along in splendid scatalogical isolation.
It was good while it lasted (and it lasted over 28 years) but now it's time to move on.
The Swansea Surf Page Noticeboard was launched during the internet's primordial past in February 1995, and was originally hosted on Swansea University's server in Wales, hence its title. It was among the first online communities for surfers and it drew in users from across the world.
Users could adopt any display name they wished when posting (including other people's), and it was pretty much anything goes as far as subject matter and content were concerned. In some ways this reflected the wild frontier phase of the internet's early development, before it evolved into the more refined, sophisticated, controlled and corporate entity that we know and endure today.
Persistent trolling led nervous university management to order The SSB's eviction from the Swansea server around late 2003. It was redeveloped by SSB members with web design expertise, then moved to commercial hosting services.
Hosting and moderating anarchic anything goes content, and resolving user disputes behind the scenes was time consuming and onerous for those involved. A members only log in model was thus adopted to regulate user input. By this time other more fully featured, commercially focussed and actively managed message boards were available for surfers, and the SSB slipped into quiet obscurity. However its essential free for all character remained intact.
Data protection rules (and good taste) make it unwise to re-post any past SSB content on this website account, but if you are still feeling nostalgic for the SSB's heyday The Internet Archive is your friend. However please note that none of the SSB's previous hosts and moderators had any control over what the Internet Archive chose to preserve for posterity, and imposter posting by SSB users was not uncommon.
It is not possible to provide personal or contact details for past members, but if an alternative SSB community is created, a link to it will be posted on this page.
Our thanks to all of you who made it so much fun.
Wishing you great waves
The SSB Collective