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Post by anonuser1023 on Feb 7, 2024 17:55:25 GMT
Think we need a mirror program I tried httrack web site copier, but did not work well. www.httrack.com/I suppose I did something wrong. Its because the old forums were in phpBB format which breaks httrack's ability to copy. Need specialized phpBB forum copier software and my google searches result in fups by lairdshaw But I have no experience with fups. Also searches gave me a recent reddit post that asks how to copy the old forum. Looks like it might be really good place to ask questions about website copier software??? https://www.reddit.com/r/internetarchive/comments/1aivmmm/soon_to_be_lost_media_videostudio_and_paint_shop/
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Post by Ken Berry on Feb 7, 2024 20:33:17 GMT
Thanks for all this. I realize now I was getting well ahead of myself when I posted that first post in this thread about webarchive. I have now come up against a brick wall when trying to get into any of the specific posts in the archive version. But I will now look at fups by lairdshaw and see if there is any time to do anything further to at least preserve a decent memory of the old forums. I have at least located it here github.com/lairdshaw/fups On first reading it seems that it could be useful for ferreting out individual threads, or even all posts in a specific forum. And it works on phpBB software, which is what the Corel forums use. But it is not clear that it would work with the archived version of the Corel forums. And I am not sure we will have time to work out how to use it on the forums before they close down on Sunday 12 February...
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Post by martinh on Feb 7, 2024 20:37:08 GMT
The Alludo announcement was "We regret to inform you that the Alludo User to User forums will be retired soon, on February 12th". Previous Corel forum stats: Total posts 378106 • Total topics 60711 • Total members 17833. That's one hell of a lot of historical information to lose. What is meant by the term 'retired'?
Has anyone clarified if Alludo's intention is
1) to delete the entire contents of the previous forum on 12th, or,
2) simply to set it as 'read only' so that it can still be searched and contents retrieved?
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Post by Ken Berry on Feb 7, 2024 20:44:48 GMT
We took 'retired' to be just a nice way of saying 'totally close down'... The reason for them closing it down was essentially financial, farcical as that essentially was since it would not cost much to continue maintaining it, essentially just the cost of the servers and one staff who could maintain it if the need very occasionally arose. Those of us administering the forums were volunteers and unpaid; as well all the advisers. If Alludo were to take on the extra Support staff to handle the load currently borne by the forums, it would cost them a packet, so we think that too is unlikely. But making the forums 'read only' would mean that the servers etc would be maintained. And Alludo has made it very clear it does not want that.
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Post by martinh on Feb 7, 2024 21:18:31 GMT
We took 'retired' to be just a nice way of saying 'totally close down'... The reason for them closing it down was essentially financial, farcical as that essentially was since it would not cost much to continue maintaining it, essentially just the cost of the servers and one staff who could maintain it if the need very occasionally arose. Those of us administering the forums were volunteers and unpaid; as well all the advisers. If Alludo were to take on the extra Support staff to handle the load currently borne by the forums, it would cost them a packet, so we think that too is unlikely. But making the forums 'read only' would mean that the servers etc would be maintained. And Alludo has made it very clear it does not want that. I've been a moderator on an entirely different forum since 2008 and know a 'technical magician' who recently organised the migration of a very large forum to another platform. Like me he is currently time poor so if the existing 6 day deadline cannot be extended I doubt he could suggest a solution which could be executed in time. Whether any migration would be possible would depend, I suspect, if the level of privileges that you administrators currently enjoy on the Alludo controlled platform is sufficient for migration purposes. There is also the question of potential costs etc. If you want me seek his general advice I can try to contact him tomorrow evening.
I understand your frustration with the obvious flaws in Alludo's decision making process but my comments on that can wait until later.
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Post by Ken Berry on Feb 7, 2024 22:23:24 GMT
Thanks for the thought Martin -- it's a nice idea. But frankly the idea of a major migration has not entered our minds. First off, I am virtually certain ProBoards, which runs the creation of this free forum, is highly unlikely to appreciate being totally inundated by the importation of a forum which has been running day after day for well over 20 years now and is therefore in its entirety absolutely humungous. As for potential costs, we are currently not in a position to pay for anything -- hence our taking up this free alternative.
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Post by levifiction on Feb 7, 2024 22:44:59 GMT
I'm testing using a Python app called "scrapy" using the configuration and code from this GitHub repo from Dascienz - github.com/Dascienz/phpBB-forum-scraperIt's not a site backup or migration, rather it's scraped data from all publicly available forums. So it'll have to be reconstructed (without images or file uploads) at a later date. I'm with Ken a migration probably isn't in the cards at all. Especially not without knowing exactly how much data there is to retain. Though I had made the offer to Corel to see if they would let me migrate the site, they never got back to me. Scraped data isn't the whole forum, but would at least let us keep the information, and work out a way to present it in a new format later. Meanwhile, these new forums will start building themselves from scratch. Scraping will still take a while, assuming this even works, but could be spread out to several computers if each computer was given a specific sub-forum link to focus on. And assuming the sudden massive amount of traffic doesn't cause Corel to shut down early. If it does work, I'll be looking into using some VMs on Google Cloud to cover the multi-computer front.
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Post by plplplpl on Feb 8, 2024 2:58:17 GMT
Could someone explain how to use the Wayback Machine, unable to work out how to retrieve anything, also get the following message View AttachmentSame message here, alas.
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Post by martinh on Feb 8, 2024 11:56:47 GMT
As for potential costs, we are currently not in a position to pay for anything -- hence our taking up this free alternative. Thanks for the clarification on all points Ken. I originally thought that the purpose of this board was to act as an assembly point/temporary home for active users of the Alludo forums whilst options were considered in relation to how to salvage all or part of the content of the original forums. My fault for speed reading!!! I trust you didn't think my previous post was a sales pitch as I'm long retired although I do care full time for an elderly parent. In relation to the wayback machine I did try saving a couple of threads of personal interest. Unfortunately, although the first page of each thread was saved it didn't save all pages in the thread. To ilustrate this please have a look at the following example thread "VS 2020 and Newblue plugins" Existing forum link = forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=67723Wayback link = web.archive.org/web/20240131114323/https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=67723 I was somewhat wrong-footed by Alldo givving us just 14 days notice to pack our bags and leave. We are, after all, purchasers of their various products - warts and all.
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Post by shengsi on Feb 8, 2024 13:57:31 GMT
I got this on archive org when I clicked on paintshop pro: Got an HTTP 302 response at crawl time Redirecting to... forum.corel.com/viewforum.php?f=56Then you;ve to wait How to use layers Reaction was: forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=70574Hrm. The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL. This page is available on the web! Help make the Wayback Machine more complete! Click here to search for all archived pages under forum.corel.com/. Next I choose the question
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Post by Ken Berry on Feb 8, 2024 17:46:04 GMT
shengsi -- thanks. I've hit that wall several times, getting the same message for whatever target I choose. And of course the answer is available on the web because the Corel forums are still working until Sunday. I wonder what answer we will get from Wayback once those forums are closed down...?
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Post by Ken Berry on Feb 8, 2024 17:52:00 GMT
martinh -- thanks for that. But no, as you have now rightly deduced, this new forum is all that will be left of the original Ulead/Corel/Alludo forums come Sunday. Alludo made it abundantly clear to us that the closure will be permanent and there will be no going back. We are just trying to get something working in the space which that closure will leave, and with little time to do it in. Alludo says it will continue supporting their products via their Support mechanism. But too many users over the years have turned to the forums when Support either could not provide an answer or did not answer at all! What this closure in turn suggests about Alludo's longer term intentions are regarding continuation of the products themselves is another matter -- though I for one am not optimistic on that score. But at least we now have this new forum to continue support for VS and PSP users...
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Post by levifiction on Feb 8, 2024 18:05:48 GMT
Well, I don't think scrapy worked. It only returned about 3000 posts, and resulted in a file only 2MB large. I think the biggest problem with the wayback machine saving the corel user to user forums is that it adds the session id parameter when surfing the site so each saved page includes a session parameter that the wayback machine saves. This can mean the links themselves are broken. There's a fix for that for non-logged in users but it requires editing the phpbb code. We could save every individual page to the wayback machine, but the links inside them may contain the sid value which will mess up linking. The pages will have to be saved without the sid parameter, and then users will have to know to manually edit the link to remove the sid while surfing the wayback machine. Also I don't think the wayback machine properly deals with forum pagination so you'd also have to save each page of a topic individually. martinh - I've saved the other two pages of that topic to the wayback. Page 1 - web.archive.org/web/20240131114323/https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=67723Page 2 - web.archive.org/web/20240208173756/https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=67723&start=15Page 3 - web.archive.org/web/20240208173951/https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=67723&start=30I don't know if it would finish in time, but I could make a python script that would grab all URLs from a single board, remove the SID parameter, and use the wayback machine to backup each page. One the wayback machine has everything, once again, we would have time to figure out a better method. By my recommendation, if you have a topic you want saved, save each page of it to the wayback individually removing the &sid= portion of the URL.
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Post by Kathy_9 on Feb 8, 2024 19:01:01 GMT
Something to keep in mind; nothing is ever really lost on the internet. For example, if you were to do a search on a particular topic related to PaintShop Pro or Video Studio you will more than likely come across a cached version of old posts from the Alludo User to User Board.
I just did a Google search on importing into filters unlimited and it brought up results from the old forum. Search Results
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Post by anonuser1023 on Feb 8, 2024 19:55:21 GMT
Something to keep in mind; nothing is ever really lost on the internet. For example, if you were to do a search on a particular topic related to PaintShop Pro or Video Studio you will more than likely come across a cached version of old posts from the Alludo User to User Board.
I just did a Google search on importing into filters unlimited and it brought up results from the old forum. Search Results The results I see bring me to current corel forum. That will only work if forum exists after Feb 12th. If you meant google's cache function well last month google announced its being discontinued. www.theverge.com/2024/2/2/24058985/google-search-cache-feature-discontinuedFor filters, plugins, etc. then yes other websites might have a copy. But if its a post on something specific then google will likely fail. ie) File Locations Not WorkingGoogle currently gives a link to old forums but its a different topic. That "File Locations Not Working" is the exact title of a specific topic on old forums. forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?t=70243So that treasure of information is what will be lost, I prefer to search a forum and hope for an instant answer first.
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