What happened to the download links for ASP.NET Forums on the www.asp.net website? As soon as Community Server 1.0 came out the links disapearred. I didn’t really think of it at the time, but now that I want to set up a Forum I would like the old ASP.NET Forums.

Why not Community Server?

Well, the reason I don’t want to use Community Server is because the licenses keep getting more restrictive with the release of each new version. I just looked at the CommunityServer.org website and it doesn’t even look like there is a free version anymore. The cheapest version is the Personal Edition and it costs $99!

What am I to do?

Well, I’ve actually decided to code my own forums, and the real reason I was looking for the old ASP.NET Forums code was to use it as a reference. All I could find is actually the Mono ASP.NET Forums; which was actually started by using the ASP.NET Forums as it’s base. I’m going to use the Mono ASP.NET Forums as a reference and take some pointers from the BlogEngine.NET project (the provider based data access), along with taking into account any tips that I’ve learned over the years of working with ASP.NET 1.x/2.0.

Also, if anyone has the old ASP.NET Forums 1.0 or 1.1 code sitting on a backup disc somewhere, could you please let me know? I’ll put it up here so others can get it.

Well, just in case you’re wondering, I’m thinking about making the code for the forums that I build available, but no promises.

**Updated 9/24/2007: **Apparently, I wasn’t completely accurate in assuming that the Express Edition of Community Server is no more. It is still available, but the page explaining its terms and license isn’t linked on the “Get it Now” page along with all the others. You can find it here: http://get.communityserver.org/Express.aspx

This still doesn’t alleviate my concern that the good old ASP.NET Forums has dissapeared. But, it has been pointed out in the comments that the old ASP.NET Forums 1.0 has been put up here: http://rapidshare.com/files/57303689/aspnetforum.rar.html