They are basically what they are called. A Bulletin Board System. I would say think of them more like very early blogs, rather than as a forum. With them used to share and post information and share files. Many were similar in format to Amiga PD and Demo Scene magazine and music disks.

BBS was also one of the main areas that ASCII art became commonplace as a BBS is text based and so ASCII artists developed some great artwork for their BBS banners and page art.


As I mentioned, a BBS is similar in content to today's blogging web software, but less advanced. So there is really little point in running one other than for historical and retro purposes.