Anyone know how to read/see posts in the old forums?

[Zep]

Had some builds and origin stories I posted years ago I would now like to get back to.

[Charistoph]

How close do you need?

 

Either way, you need to use the Way Back Machine to find them.

 

Here's a quick link to start from, starting at Sept 4, 2012: https://web.archive.org/web/20120904100456/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/index.php

[Oubliette_Red]

Zombie Man posted a link to the old forums down in guides. I think he included a few tips regarding getting to posts with links not working.

 

https://score.savecoh.com/index.php/topic,1706.0.html

[Zep]

Thank you both!

 

Any thoughts on how to get the search function to work?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Thank you both!

 

Any thoughts on how to get the search function to work?

You cannot. Think about it for a moment: the search functionality on an online forum depends on that forum's backend and database, neither of which are copied by The Wayback Machine - all it does is take a static snapshot of the pages themselves.

[Zep]

Thank you.

 

Yes, I dont expect the old forum functions to work -- are there any other ways to search the old data?

 

I have some Bio's and Builds posted I would like to find again.

[_NOPE_]

Thank you.

 

Yes, I dont expect the old forum functions to work -- are there any other ways to search the old data?

 

I have some Bio's and Builds posted I would like to find again.

 

Hmmm.... that gives me an idea.... I was able to make a Dev Tracker by parsing XML, I wonder if I could do something similar to make a one-time program that would parse the Wayback Machine and create essentially a "database" of posts.... hmmmmm....

 

 

[The Fifth Horseman]

Hmmm.... that gives me an idea.... I was able to make a Dev Tracker by parsing XML, I wonder if I could do something similar to make a one-time program that would parse the Wayback Machine and create essentially a "database" of posts.... hmmmmm....

You absolutely could, yes.

[Zep]

Hmmm.... that gives me an idea.... I was able to make a Dev Tracker by parsing XML, I wonder if I could do something similar to make a one-time program that would parse the Wayback Machine and create essentially a "database" of posts.... hmmmmm....

You absolutely could, yes.

 

You would be my mostest favorite person in the whole wide world for at least a week!

 

I am betting others would feel the same.

 

How much raw data would forums like that use? Out of curiosity. 

[_NOPE_]

Hmmm.... that gives me an idea.... I was able to make a Dev Tracker by parsing XML, I wonder if I could do something similar to make a one-time program that would parse the Wayback Machine and create essentially a "database" of posts.... hmmmmm....

You absolutely could, yes.

 

You would be my mostest favorite person in the whole wide world for at least a week!

 

I am betting others would feel the same.

 

How much raw data would forums like that use? Out of curiosity.

 

Just plain text? Probably a few megabytes. They say you could fit the Library of Congress on a 1.44MB floppy if it was plaintext. Graphics and such makes that grow... exponentially.

[Zep]

Not to disparage the mighty floppy, but, wiki says the library of congress has over 38 million books. Some might just be coloring books (already filled in) but still I dont see that fitting.

 

I am getting some old Apple II's working..... the 140k floppies have some serious storage then? :) I have 20 of them and they are 2 sided even.

 

Lets wait till I get COH running on them (KIDDING).

[The Fifth Horseman]

Just plain text? Probably a few megabytes. They say you could fit the Library of Congress on a 1.44MB floppy if it was plaintext. Graphics and such makes that grow... exponentially.

I'd expect around a gigabyte, quite possibly more if the forum was particularly long-running or busy such as the official forum for an eight year run of a popular MMO

[Zep]

I was just wondering if it would be possible/practical to grab all the plain text, load it into word (or whatever) and search that -- sounding less practical by the moment.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I was just wondering if it would be possible/practical to grab all the plain text, load it into word (or whatever) and search that

Oh hell no. Way too much stuff to grab manually. Some form of automation would be necessary to just grab the pages from the archive, and if you're doing that you might as well use a DOM parser to scrape the details of each post into a proper database.

[_NOPE_]

That's what I'm doing now. About 25% done in 8 hours.

[Zep]

That's what I'm doing now. About 25% done in 8 hours.

 

I can set up Hyper V if you ever need my to run a VM to do work related to COH. Be happy to leave the machine running over night etc.

[Stan The Man]

That's what I'm doing now. About 25% done in 8 hours.

I'm going to start giving you influence every hour on the hour for the rest of the week.

[_NOPE_]

Sorry, it looks like my algorithm was faulty, it's a "Microsoft Minute", because every time it finds a new "folder" in the Wayback Machine, that's a whole lot other files that weren't previously included in the calculations:

 

And this is just the first step of GETTING the data locally. After that, I still have to make a program to "parse" it into a database format that's searchable. So, it's coming... Soon™

[Zep]

Thank you so very much for helping with this!!!

 

I appreciate the update.

 

Now I just need to make sure I remember my old forum name :)

[_NOPE_]

Update today:

 

11303 files (16.76%)

 

Note again the "Microsoft Minute" happening here. Even though I've downloaded an additional 2,000 files+, I've found even MORE file than I'd found before, so that reduces the total percentage. Honestly, this could take weeks. The spider has to go slow to not trigger a ban from the Wayback Machine.

[Zep]

Thanks!

[_NOPE_]

Update:

 

16279 files (15.57%)

 

We're in this for the LONG haul.... every time I think we're making progress, the spider finds more files to index. This could take a LONG while, so don't expect anything any time soon on this.

[Zep]

Thank you for doing this just the same.

 

 

[_NOPE_]

Thank me until I have RESULTS. Until then, it's all fluff and numbers....

 

 

... that should totally be a band name... "Fluff and Numbers".

[Healix]

Fluff and numbers...could be fun!