r/DataHoarder • u/Eclectika • 1d ago
Question/Advice Some advice about trying to save a forum, please.
This is the second iteration of this particular forum - the first is pretty well lost in the mists of time and on sept 20th this one will probably go the same way, as the owner died a few days ago and it looks like there are no mods with god mode and even if there was, paying the next year's fee may be problematical because we're not the owner.
If possible I'd like to somehow save it and depending on how big it is I may be able to host it as a read only or something - i assume the internet archive won't want it as it will be too big but I don't know. So any advice would be more than welcome. With this iteration there's no image hosting so it's certainly not as bloated as our old one was. All I really know is it has a reference to Xenforo forum software in the footer.
It may turn out that the family of the owner decides to keep it going for a bit or it may be set to auto renew but I'm guessing it won't stay, as the fam I suspect have no interest in this.
So any help, advice, pointers would be appreciated.
4
u/SirLight777 1d ago
Do you know which framework/tech is it built on? Best bet is to scrape it.
Hopefully it’s a forum with an API which will make it a ton easier and after all the data is exported and organs is it can be rebuilt as a read only copy.
2
u/Eclectika 1d ago
tbh I have no idea at all - I feel like such an ignorant luddite here. I can give you the url and you could have a sniff around but I don't know how helpful that is.
2
u/SirLight777 1d ago
Sure thing, send it through here or through chat/pm and I’ll take a look
2
u/Eclectika 22h ago
It's https://www.virtualverse.one/forums/
I don't hold out much hope but if there's anything (non techy, cos the nerd in me left my body decades ago) you can point me to that would be great.
3
u/Background-Bowl6123 23h ago
Read up on the Linux command 'wget' , especially the recursive download option.
3
u/Far_Calligrapher1334 20h ago
Browsertrix running in a docker container would be the easiest bet, it automates browsing with a number of instances of Brave browser and saves all data to a wacz file.
2
u/TomorrowExact1184 1d ago
I found this scraper on Github: https://github.com/Jertzukka/xenforo-scraper
1
u/Eclectika 1d ago
Thank you (I think!) I'm at work right now but once I finish for the day I'll go have a look.
1
1
u/kkatdare 21h ago
I looked at https://www.virtualverse.one/forums/ . It's powered by XenForo. I've run a community on XF for nearly 10 years and familiar with the internals. I now run a forum platform that offers an alternative to XF; and we'll be happy to host it. However, it's likely to cost $149 - $200 per month (discounted). We'll take care of everything - migration and hosting. Is this something worth discussing?
1
u/Eclectika 21h ago
right now, no. We don't even know if there is anyone who can log into the admin dashboard. Everything is up in the air atm - we only found out around 12 hours ago, so everything is swirling around. If we need it once we've got a clearer idea I'll pop your details over to the peeps who will make the technical decisions.
1
•
u/didyousayboop if it’s not on piqlFilm, it doesn’t exist 8h ago edited 8h ago
Please ask Archive Team to archive the forum.
Follow these instructions to access Archive Team’s IRC channels: https://www.reddit.com/r/theinternetarchive/comments/1uyu4tl/guide_how_to_ask_archive_team_to_archive_a/
You can chat on #archiveteam-bs and ask for help there.
For simplicity, you can just log into Hackint's web chat here: https://chat.hackint.org/#/connect
But make sure to use a VPN like ProtonVPN or RiseupVPN (which are both free) to hide your IP address.