The hidden 'plain text' toggle on old forum software saved my sanity

I found this abandoned tech support forum from 2003 where every thread was hijacked by animated GIF signatures. Turned out you could add '?style=plain' to the URL strip it to just text. Still works somehow. Has anyone else found a simple URL trick that fixes an ancient site's layout?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_morgan8119d agoMost Upvoted

Yep, old Siteground forums had this trick where you'd add "?simple=1" to the URL and it would kill all the animated badges people had in their profiles. Saved me from getting a migraine trying to read a thread about PHP errors. Still works, too, last I checked.

jason56219d ago

That "?simple=1" trick is a lifesaver, @evan_morgan81. I remember those old forums where every other user had a spinning skull or flashing rainbow badge in their signature. It was like trying to read a post through a strobe light. I've actually used that same trick on a few other forum software platforms too, not just Siteground. Some of the vBulletin and phpBB communities have similar hidden parameters that strip out the CSS and JavaScript clutter. It's amazing how many forums still rely on that old codebase and never bothered to patch those workarounds. You just have to know the right query string to tack on the end of the URL.