March 28, 2024, 07:54:41 AM *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: 2014 - First BRI Maine Eagles egg laid March 16, 2014. Second egg laid March 19, 2014.
 
   Home   Help Login Register  
Pages:  1 2 3 [4]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Other Technical issues  (Read 35204 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
PattiO
Member
*
Offline Offline

Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 10,039



WWW
« Reply #45 on: September 04, 2013, 07:47:52 PM »

Just FYI ... Did not read through all your posts yet ... but when I saw it mentioned the other day I did get on the forum and posted.
Logged
nightengale
Member
*
Offline Offline

Location: Grand Island, NY
Posts: 7,183



« Reply #46 on: September 04, 2013, 09:13:20 PM »

Laura ...unless anyone has the technical expertise to import the threads in ... in bulk .... as a thread ... I guess the only option would be to bring them in through the arduous task of post by post. I was thinking of trying that here in a special archive thread under each site.... but if you are pretty sure that the old board will survive and/or there is little collective interest in the old data and not much worth to safeguarding it .... I will think about saving what might be of interest to me on my own system ... nostalgic fool that I am. There appears to be a greater and greater risk that we might lose access to the old board .... but it might not be as valuable to one person as another ... I understand that.

Yep Patti .... comes up slow in IE ... doesn't come up at all in FF ... why? ... most likely because FF will not allow the host's spyware download ads.
Logged

~Chris~ 
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world ~ John Muir
 
Laurad
Administrator
*
Offline Offline

Location: London, UK
Posts: 8,796



« Reply #47 on: September 05, 2013, 06:45:00 AM »

........ but if you are pretty sure that the old board will survive and/or there is little collective interest in the old data and not much worth to safeguarding it ....

Chris, I don't think I ever said that there is little collective interest in the old data, perhaps you misunderstood me. The reason several of us post almost every day there is to ensure the Forum is ACTIVE for the very reason that we think it is worth safeguarding and of value.

You said you thought it might be better to make it appear as if the Forum is busy, I was saying that I didn't think that would achieve anything other than increasing revenue in the advertising in which case they may get more reluctant to part with the data.

We really do not know what's going on and are just guessing all the time. Is the Forum safe? Your guess is as good as mine.

As I said before, methods were looked into years ago at ways of making our own backups of threads and data and Judy (not Judyb) did manage to copy a lot down to her computer, but not in a format that is easy to search through. Doing it post by post, thread by thread - well, look into it if you can and see how laborious it might be and whether it's worth doing. None of us wants to lose it and I have been battling for 3 years now to try and find a way to save the Forum data in a format which we can then "restore" into our own personal copy of the phpBB2 software on our server. I don't know what else to say at this time.

Thanks for your thoughts an input, though - we are a little on edge as to the safety of the data. We are keeping an eye on it and trying very hard to communicate with them.
Logged

.................................................. Expect the Unexpected...
nightengale
Member
*
Offline Offline

Location: Grand Island, NY
Posts: 7,183



« Reply #48 on: September 05, 2013, 12:11:51 PM »

Laura ..... it is a bit of a concern that you can't get a hold of the host and that the forum is now essentially being used by the host as a spyware snag ... that's why I posted with a time is of essence tone. The reason I suggested posting more frequently was JudyB's post ...


 The hosting company makes their money from the ads that run at the top and bottom of each page - and they've probably realized that not many people are looking at our forum, so not many people are seeing their ads - which makes us not very valuable.  

I thought if we posted more frequently, we would be seen as more 'valuable' by the host and they might take you communication attempts more seriously.

I could be wrong .... maybe the data will stay there forever and is of little or no concern whatsoever. I just thought that with the flashing spyware invitations and the extremely slow load time, the host might not be trusted at this point and it would serve us well to retrieve our data sooner rather than later.... one way or the other. Sorry for the expression of concern.    
Logged

~Chris~ 
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world ~ John Muir
 
JudyB
Administrator
*
Offline Offline

Location: Midcoast Maine
Posts: 8,248



WWW
« Reply #49 on: September 05, 2013, 01:16:54 PM »

Chris, we are worried too.  I totally agree that "it would serve us well to retrieve our data sooner rather than later" - it's the "how" that's a bit daunting.

Laura and I are trying everything we can to get a copy of the data from the hosting company - that would probably be the easiest to manage going forward - but does require them to communicate with us.

I'm thinking there are a dozen - maybe two dozen - people who post here on a somewhat regular basis.  I may be wrong, but I'm thinking that even if 24 of us made a dozen posts a day on the old forum - it would be a very tiny drop in the bucket in terms of add revenue.  And with the forum going so slowly, it would be time that most of us really don't have - especially with no real reason to believe we'd get something back.

Moving on to your second proposal - I have changed the configuration on the old forum so there are now 50 posts per page rather than 15, and I copied the Carolina Raptor Center thread (one of the smallest with only 256 posts) to Word, one page at a time.  256 posts is 6 pages, and it took me about 15 minutes.  The resulting Word document is 184 pages and about 45 MB. 

I need to close out of the computer now - Charlie and I have plans for the evening - but will post my document somewhere that people can see either tonight or tomorrow.  I will note that the Maine Eagle threads are around 15,000 posts - so potentially 60 times bigger - perhaps 10-12,000 pages in Word, and maybe 2-3 GB (they might be less - we had a lot of pictures on the Carolina thread, and they take up more space and memory than words.

Bye!
Logged

nightengale
Member
*
Offline Offline

Location: Grand Island, NY
Posts: 7,183



« Reply #50 on: September 05, 2013, 02:39:39 PM »

Against my better judgement to just drop this discussion (I seem to be upsetting people and that certainly was not my intent) .... I did try a test .... brought over a Decorah Thread post from the old forum and placed on the Blair Thread to see if came over ok ... it did (I used the Blair Thread as testing ground as it is just Emily and I over there and will provide the least potential disruption) ...
http://www.window-on-wildlife.com/index.php?topic=124.msg70372#msg70372

This is what I meant to bringing over the posts from the old forum to the new ... except we would create a new sub thread for the archived files under the main thread for that particular thread.

No pressure .... don't have to do this .... just a thought ... it would save the material ... better than saving it to Word  ... I would volunteer for a thread or two .... again no pressure.
Logged

~Chris~ 
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world ~ John Muir
 
JudyB
Administrator
*
Offline Offline

Location: Midcoast Maine
Posts: 8,248



WWW
« Reply #51 on: September 05, 2013, 10:20:01 PM »

Chris - I'm happy to set up an archive area if folks would like to try copying the 200,000 posts from the old forum over here.  If you and others want to do this - all I need to know is which threads you're ready to copy, so I can make sure the archive area has a similar tree structure to the old forum so there's a home for the new threads.  I'd recommend that only one person copy posts from any particular thread, to make sure the posts stay in order - though you can take turns as long as two people aren't doing it at once.

I don't mean to seem upset or negative - but am very much overwhelmed at the prospect.  But that's my issue - and if you'd like to give the copying thing a try, I'll do my best to help with the Admin parts of setting it up. And hey - if enough of us chip in, maybe we can copy at least those threads that seem most important.

It's now 1 am, all the cams are down on the other forum where I'm an Admin, and I still haven't posted my panda pictures, to say nothing of the pictures of the local eagles and osprey. 

Oops - I really am past functioning - I now see that you want to set up a series of new archive threads under our current tree structure - which doesn't need any admin support.  I'd recommend having a first post in each new thread that explains that the thread contains posts copied from the old forum - but whatever works for you is fine with me.  Once you've set up a test thread and copied some posts, I think we'll all have a better idea of how it will work.

Thanks and  zzzz
Logged

Dutch Eagle Fan
Member
*
Offline Offline

Location: Nes Ameland (NL)
Posts: 338



WWW
« Reply #52 on: September 06, 2013, 02:21:30 AM »

Another option might be to take screenshots of all the posts on the old forum and post the images here in an archive.
This would also ensure that the images included in the old messages are saved. Sometimes people delete old Photobucket albums, an account is cancelled or a host stops with it's services.
Logged

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the
moments that take our breath away.

Dutch Peregrine Falcon forum
nightengale
Member
*
Offline Offline

Location: Grand Island, NY
Posts: 7,183



« Reply #53 on: September 06, 2013, 08:36:45 AM »

JudyB .... thanks for the go ahead to start a new thread. I would not have done that without an ok from an Administrator. We have had people start threads on their own ... some are pertinent ... but some are just junk containing a post or two from someone we never hear from again on a topic of little interest. Personally, I wouldn't start a thread without some type of collaboration with an Administrator.

Let me give it some thought on what thread to start with (that is an ambitious statement mhihi) I might bring over 'Highlights' from the old forum for a particular thread.

DEF ... your idea is very good ... you are right about the possibility of member's captures no longer being available if a post is merely cut and pasted from a quote. It would involve several more steps to process a screen cap ... but for a more important post ... it would be worth it... thank you!
Logged

~Chris~ 
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world ~ John Muir
 
JudyB
Administrator
*
Offline Offline

Location: Midcoast Maine
Posts: 8,248



WWW
« Reply #54 on: September 06, 2013, 09:04:39 AM »

I thought about screenshots, DEF - but I only see 2-3 posts at a time, so even for my modest 256-post test thread, that might be 100 screenshots.  The observation thread for the Maine cam from August 2006 through April 2007 is 15,333 posts - even if we could fit 5 posts in a screenshot, it would be 5000 screenshots that would have to be saved somewhere and then posted here - and that's just one of our primary threads.

I just made the following page - http://www.window-on-wildlife.com/archive/archive_index.html - and uploaded a PDF version of the word document I mentioned earlier, of the cam at the Carolina Raptor Center.  I signed out before copying it which removed some of the buttons (like edit and delete, which may only be visible to admins), and optimized the PDF for minimum size, but the 256-post thread is still 7 MB.  It does include all the pictures, though the GIFs convert to a still shot, and links to videos and slideshows seem to work (assuming they're still posted on YouTube or PhotoBucket or some such place).

I have made a couple of changes to the old forum - there are now 100 posts on a page, instead of 15, which might make the pages open a bit slower (though they're slow enough now that I didn't notice a change).  I also disabled email and PMs on the old forum in the hopes that those buttons wouldn't show up in every post - that didn't work, but maybe there's a delay, so if they eventually disappear, I did that.

Chris, I just saw your post as I was typing this - I think some sort of "highlights" thread is a great idea.  It may take longer than my "grab everything and make it as small as possible" suggestion - but will include the things we're most likely to want to review.  And it's possible that some combination of the two will be the way to go.

Logged

PattiO
Member
*
Offline Offline

Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 10,039



WWW
« Reply #55 on: September 07, 2013, 09:21:30 PM »

I'm not sure I totally understand yet how to do this ... but I would be most willing to help!  Winter is coming!   lollol  I'll be back at my computer more. 
Logged
Pages:  1 2 3 [4]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines Install Simple Machines Forum web hosting Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!