How to use The Spring
Plain-English walkthrough. If you’ve never used a BBS, start here.
What The Spring is
The Spring was Austin’s original online community — a web-based discussion site that ran from 1996 to 2001 at spring.net. Over a thousand members. Eighty-five conferences (topics). Twenty years later, the whole thing is back online at austinspring.com/bbs: every original conversation preserved, every topic open for new comments, and anyone can sign up to post.
How to join — under a minute
- Open austinspring.com/bbs in any web browser. That’s the front door — you’ll see a list of 29 conferences, from The Porch (general chat) to Drool (movie stars) to Politics, Music, Books, and so on.
- Click a conference — say The Porch. You’ll see the list of topics that people started there between 1996 and 2001. Each row: a topic number, a title, the original author, and a bar showing how big the conversation got.
- Click a topic title. You’ll land on the conversation — automatically scrolled to where the comment box is. You can read the original 1996 seed post above and all the responses, or scroll back up to the beginning with the ↑ Start of topic link.
- To reply, click Sign up (top nav, or the link right above the comment box if you’re logged out). You’ll go to a signup form.
- Pick a handle. That’s your username — 2 to 20 lowercase letters, numbers, or underscores. Something like
paulw or markb42. No email required, no phone number, no captcha.
- Pick a password — at least 8 characters — and type it twice to confirm.
- Write your password down somewhere safe. There’s no password reset. No “forgot password” email (because there’s no email). If you lose your password you lose your handle, and you’d have to start over with a new one.
- Click “create account.” You’re in. Go back to any topic, type your reply in the box at the bottom, click » post comment. Done.
Tip. After signing up, your handle appears in the top-right of every page (e.g. ~paulw). You stay logged in across visits. To come back later: open austinspring.com/bbs, click log in (top right), enter handle + password.
Finding your way around
On every thread page you’ll see:
- Amber jump bar at the top — “↓ N new comments since 2026” and “↓ Jump to reply box.” One click takes you where you want to go.
- Topic nav bar — ← Prev: {title} · Next: {title} → · All {Conference} topics · ↑ Start of topic · Help! · (Sign Up / Log In if you’re not logged in).
- Pager at top and bottom if the topic has more than 100 responses (big ones like Colin Firth (Part 3) have 1,999).
- Comment box at the very bottom if you’re logged in.
On every conference index page (e.g. /bbs/porch/):
- Green “+N” badges next to topic titles mean that topic has N new comments from 2026+. Easy to spot where the fresh action is.
- Click any topic title to read and reply.
What’s different from 1996
We kept almost everything the same, with three deliberate modern choices:
- No email required. Just a handle and a password. Faster, more private.
- No password reset. Write yours down. The upside: no “did someone take over my account?” attacks.
- Text only. No images, no attachments, no emoji keyboards, no algorithms picking what you see. Type your thoughts.
Questions?
If something’s not working or you’re confused, poke around the Users Guide (adapted from the original 1996 Yapp Online Users Guide) or just post a question in The Porch. Someone will reply.
Browse the conferences →
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