Saving the Library...

Ken Cook

Ken Cook

Joined
Feb 19, 1999
Messages
2,959
As many of you already know, there is a chance that the BFC Archives and all the current posts may be lost. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see this thread and then please let Spark know what you prefer.

http://www.bladeforums.com/ubb/Forum41/HTML/001395.html

I've gone through a Software Change over and File Import once before on another site, and I watched that website that had been around for 4 years lose everything. It was tragic and without any exaggeration, sickening and heart breaking, but there was absolutely nothing that could be done about it. I tried, the Infopop people tried, (Infopop are the people who make UBB and we were switching from an obsolete Discussion Forum to UBB) and a massive effort was made to do the imports, but it just wasn't possible. So through no one's fault, an incredible wealth of information, entertainment, and just plain golden memories were lost forever.


It is POSSIBLE that this may happen with BFC. I know Spark will do EVERYTHING within his power to prevent this, but there is still that chance. If a particular change over has never been done before, you just never know what's going to happen until you try.
It may go smoothly and without a hitch, but several years online has taught me that this is the exception rather than the rule.

So!

I'd like to make a suggestion.
ANYONE, and I mean ANY of you that have any significant free HD space, go through the forums that you visit, look up the old threads that mean something to you, or those threads that you found particularly informative and instructional, and save them to your hard drive.

Create a folder specially for them and save them with a clear and concise label.

The way I'm doing this is, for example,

Folder: BFC THREADS

File name: Saving the Library Thread 1 Page 1 (or page 2, 3, 4, however many pages this particular thread grew to.)

If a second thread developed on the same subject, it would be
File name: Saving the Library Thread 2 Page 1 and so on.

If you go up to "File" in your Browser, and click "Save As..." then you will be able to save the entire page exactly as it appears when you surf the forums.

This may be the preferable way to save them, as it will provide flexability if at some time in the future there is a chance that they may be entered into the new software.

NOTE! Yes, I'm a Moderator, NO that doesn't mean that I've got any inside scoop on this, and I'm not acting under "orders" or even with Spark's foreknowledge. I'm just making this suggestion as one Forum Member to other like minded Members.

This may be a totally useless effort I'm suggesting, but it can't hurt to try. At worst, you'll have some meaningful stuff saved on your puter for your own enjoyment, and at best, we may be able to resurrect these "Golden Oldies" that MIGHT otherwise be lost forever.

In the meantime, let's all keep our fingers crossed, say a prayer if you're of a mind to, and let's support Spark as much as possible. I know what a hellish effort it is that he's undertaking.


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Desenfundeme no sin la razón, envaineme no sin honor
Usual Suspect
MOLON LABE!
 
There's been a lot of talk of archiving the forums off to CDs and offering them for sale. But, my concern is this: just how big is this place? Spark can probably give an answer pretty quick, but it's only part of the story. A lot of posts here reference images that are hosted at different sites. A lot of the information content of those posts depends on those images.

Last week, I flew on an airplane and they showed a movie. Being cheap, I didn't spring for the headphones. It's sort of fun to look up at the images and imagine what they might be saying. (I think I had more fun with the movie than the people who bought headphones.)

Being cheap, I have no television set. But, sometimes I listen to the TV news using a radio I have that can receive the TV audio. Of course, I miss a lot because I can't see the pictures.

Just archiving the text would be like watching a movie without sound or listening to the TV without the picture.

There is software available that will make a local copy of everything on a website, every image linked by it, etc. I don't even want to think what would happen if you turned that stuff loose on bladeforums.com. My guess is that it'd approach a terrabyte.

650MBytes per CD.

So, the complete bladeforums collection would have to come in a charming collector's boxed set edition of 1,538 CDs.


------------------
Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.balisongcollector.com
 
Chuck,
You're right, this place is huge. I can't begin to guess how many gigs of space are involved. Hundreds? Thousands?
Who knows?

But using the method I described above will save the threads EXACTLY as they appear onscreen. This includes all links, HTML, and posted pictures.

I can't imagine that all of it could ever be put back online, but it would be invaluable to be able to pick and choose.
It's a lot of data, but with better than 11,000 members, we have a good chance of having almost everything of any significance if we can get enough people involved.

If everything works out and the transition is smooth, GREAT! Everyone can just delete what they saved and get their disk space back.

If it DOESN'T work out, then at least someone has it and it may find it's way back online sometime in the future.

If no one saves it?
Poof. Up in smoke.



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Desenfundeme no sin la razón, envaineme no sin honor
Usual Suspect
MOLON LABE!
 
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gollnick:
There is software available that will make a local copy of everything on a website, every image linked by it, etc. I don't even want to think what would happen if you turned that stuff loose on bladeforums.com. My guess is that it'd approach a terrabyte.
</font>
Click to expand...

I've used this type of software before. I call it a "recursive web suck", and it's really amazing stuff.
smile.gif
If your web server is configured to allow it, someone can literally suck down all the contents of the site, and the software saves it in the same web tree organization.

There are better ways to archive everything that doing a web suck though. Since most stuff is just plain text, some compression should limit the amount of disk storage needed. Do you think there's a terabyte's worth?

/mel
biggrin.gif
 
i agree, saving all the images isn't really a reasonable solution, seeing as a lot of the links are broken anyways. i would think with compression though, it would be a reasonable size, and what links do work could be accessed using the existing hyperlinks. it does seems like a waste of space to save all of the posts in html considering it's mostly text, maybe you could use a separate viewing utility? i dunno though, that's getting overly complicated. I'm sure spark will do everything he can to save the forums though, i have faith. Pete
 
The threads are about 75k per full page. However being loose text they compress very well (~10k). A hundred or so threads compressed would be about a meg, so a gig is a hundred thousand threads. This was individual compression via gzip, group compression is even more extensive as there would be optomization across threads.

Instead of trying to cd the whole thing, cd particular forums. It would be a way to raise money as well as I for one would buy a copies of a few forums. As well the various manufacturers might want thier forums for reference, not to mention makers having the shop talk forum and archive on cd. For those who want a speedy reference then they could transfer the compressed files to their HD and uncompress then. A script to do that is trivial and could be included on the CD.

-Cliff
 
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