About Flamenet

Flamenet is a retro internet portal that recreates the look, feel, and spirit of the early web — specifically the golden era of Y2K portals like Flamenet, Yahoo, Excite, and AOL. Dense navigation, scrolling headlines, a directory of links, community forums, instant messaging, auction listings, and a games arcade: everything you remember from staying online past midnight on a 56k modem.

It is not a museum. It is a living, working community built on modern infrastructure but styled and organized the way the web felt in October 2001. Sign up, connect your AIM client, post in the forum, browse the directory, and bid on something in the listings. That's Flamenet.

Our story

The early web

Internet portals were how people navigated the web. Flamenet indexed billions of pages. Yahoo organized the entire internet into a directory. AOL Instant Messenger put a buddy list on every desktop. The web was crowded, colorful, and full of possibility.

What we lost

The portal era gave way to algorithmic feeds, walled gardens, and platforms designed to keep you scrolling rather than exploring. The web got faster but lost something — the sense that it was a place you could wander into and discover something unexpected.

What we built

Flamenet is our attempt to bring that era back, not as nostalgia tourism but as a genuine online community. Every plugin, every pixel, and every feature is designed to feel like a tab you had open in Internet Explorer 6 — except it works on your modern browser and your modern computer.

Today

Flamenet is live at flamenet.io with a full suite of community features, encrypted private messaging, a real AIM server, an auction marketplace, a job board, Q&A, and a curated link directory. New features ship regularly. Come join us.

What’s on Flamenet

AIM Classic OSCAR-protocol instant messaging. Connect with a real AIM 5.x client.

ICQ Classic ICQ sign-in using your UIN. Connect with a real ICQ client via the Flamenet server.

Forum phpBB-style discussion boards organized by topic. No account required to read.

Groups Public and private community groups, like Yahoo Groups. Post, discuss, organize.

Messaging Encrypted private messages between registered users. AES-256-GCM at rest.

Listings eBay-style auction marketplace. Place bids, win items, or sell your own.

Jobs A job board with applications, cover letters, and professional profiles.

Answers Community Q&A in the spirit of Yahoo Answers. Ask and vote on answers.

Events A community events calendar. Post meetups, online events, and announcements.

Games Browser-based multiplayer games. Chess with full move validation. More coming.

Link Directory A hand-curated directory of links organized by category, like the original Yahoo.

Headlines A scrolling news ticker and headlines list pulled from RSS feeds.

Files Secure cloud file storage. Upload, download, rename, and share files with time-limited links.

Knowledge Base Guides and answers to common Flamenet questions, including how to connect AIM.

Security

Flamenet runs automated security scans every 24 hours and gives administrators tools to run each scan manually at any time. Here is what is checked and how.

Check	What it scans	How	Frequency
Core integrity	Every core file	MD5 checksum compared against the official WordPress.org list for the installed version. Modified or missing core files are flagged and can be repaired in one click.	Daily
Malware patterns	All PHP and JS files in plugins and themes	16 regex patterns covering common backdoor techniques: obfuscated `eval()`, shell execution functions, variable function calls fed by user input, hidden iframes, and long hex- or base64-encoded payloads.	Daily
Uploads directory	Every uploaded file	Any PHP file found in the uploads directory is flagged as critical — PHP files have no legitimate reason to be there.	Daily
Post content	500 most recent published posts and 500 approved comments	Scans stored content for injected scripts, `javascript:` URIs, `eval()`, `document.write()`, and `base64_decode()`.	Daily
S3 file scan	Every user-uploaded file stored in S3	Files are streamed to a temporary location in 1 MB chunks (no file-size limit) and checked against the same 16 malware patterns plus 4 HTML-injection patterns: script tags, JavaScript protocol URIs, inline event handlers, and iframes. Pure image, audio, and video files are skipped. The file owner is notified by private message if a match is found.	Daily
Have I Been Pwned — email & username	Every registered user’s email address and username	Checked against the Have I Been Pwned breach database. If an account is found in a known breach, the user is notified by private message listing the affected services.	Daily
Have I Been Pwned — password	Password used at sign-in	Uses the HIBP k-anonymity API: only the first 5 characters of a SHA-1 hash are sent — the plain-text password never leaves the server. If the password has appeared in a public breach database, the user is notified immediately to change it.	At login

Detection is pattern-based and does not use a traditional antivirus engine. Sufficiently obfuscated code may not match known patterns. Results are reviewed by administrators and can be dismissed individually if a finding is a false positive.

What we believe

Privacy first

We collect the minimum data needed to run the site. We don’t sell it, profile you with it, or use it to train AI. Private messages are encrypted.

No ads, no tracking

No third-party ad networks, no tracking pixels, no cross-site surveillance. Our analytics are self-hosted, cookieless, and anonymous.

Open to humans

Flamenet is for people. Our robots.txt and ai.txt block every known crawler and AI training bot. The content here is made by humans, for humans.

Genuinely retro

This isn’t a skin on top of a modern social platform. Every feature is purpose-built to feel like the web circa 2001, running on solid modern infrastructure.

Get in touch

We are a small team and we read every message. Use the address that matches your topic:

General questions hello@flamenet.io

Abuse & content reports abuse@flamenet.io

Privacy & account deletion privacy@flamenet.io

Security vulnerabilities security@flamenet.io

DMCA & copyright dmca@flamenet.io

Help & guides Knowledge Base

You can also find answers to common questions in the Knowledge Base, read our Privacy Policy, or review the Terms of Use.