When did forums really kick off?

Now I realize that through things such as usenet people have been communication to eachother through message boards for quite a while now, but what I'm really asking about is the modern forum we know of and think of today.

When did internet forums like that of FST really begin kicking off and enjoying some public success and awareness, with ease of accessibility to the average user?

And where exactly does FST stand in that timeline? Was this forum created when the idea of a forum was relatively new? Was FST an early adopter of this kind of communication or was it started when the idea of a forum was already common knowledge?

I think forums started to take off in the really late 90s, early 2000s.
Pretty sure the biggest forum software around that time of the explosion was UBB.classic. Around 2000 was when vBulletin, phpbb and IPB (The big forum softwares) were created and released, adding a lot of features which made running your own website with 'dynamic content' much easier than was previously.

This forum was started in 2002. It took off in 2003 when the link (then klboard.tk if i remember right) was added as the kazaa lite client's start page and main support/release forum. Forums were already booming, so you can't say this site was an early adopter.