Original Live Forums Archive

[Michiyo]

Hello all!

 

A Reddit user dropped a SQLite DB archive of the original live forums last week, and I've spent the last few days working on converting it, and making a browse-able (and soon I swear! Searchable) version of those forums.  https://forumarchive.cityofheroes.dev/ Basic stuff works right now, you can browse all threads in each forum, and view topics, no search, and user profiles are minimal at best.  Any images that were posted directly to the forums are gone, and many images that were put on 3rd party hosting sites (PhotoBucket is a big one...) are also gone.  The template is based off the forums on my site, as I didn't feel like trying to dig through the broken mess on the wayback machine.

 

Feedback is welcome.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Michiyo

[Booper]

47 minutes ago, Michiyo said:

Feedback is welcome

Very cool. This is the first time I've seen my old posts in over a decade. Thanks for putting this together.

[Bionic_Flea]

Wow.  That brought back a lot of memories and trapped me for about an hour!

[Vanden]

Way cool! I noticed if you browse a users posts, the list just ends. I hope that's because additional pages for user posts just isn't implemented yet, and not because the older posts don't exist in the archive.

[Michiyo]

54 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Way cool! I noticed if you browse a users posts, the list just ends. I hope that's because additional pages for user posts just isn't implemented yet, and not because the older posts don't exist in the archive.

Correct, profiles are VERY much not finished, I have to implement pagination (otherwise some members would cause my server to catch fire.. lol)

[_NOPE_]

Well... f#$%. 😒

[Vanden]

2 minutes ago, The Philotic Knight said:

Well... f#$%. 😒

 

Sorry there's no commiserations reaction, but take this Thanks as a consolation

[Greycat]

22 hours ago, Michiyo said:

H and many images that were put on 3rd party hosting sites (PhotoBucket is a big one...) are also gone.

 

 

Well, got back *really* early on mine... to pre-ED.

 

And as for PHotobucket, well... yeah, PB pretty well screwed itself when it tried to screw its users with its ridiculous payment demands.

[Hyperstrike]

Question, can you, in the interim, add the site to the Google Console to get it crawled?

Might be a good solution until an internal search function can be build...

[Michiyo]

On 9/19/2022 at 5:21 PM, The Philotic Knight said:

Well... f#$%. 😒

Sorry PK... 😕

[Zappalina]

Thank you to everyone involved in resurrecting the forums that are from a game that I have enjoyed playing in the past, it's very nice to look back at them.  Good & fond memories and I appreciate all the effort that went into it, from the people compiling information and their efforts or dropping links, hosting old files and also creating the new forum.  💛

 

 

[lemming]

On 9/19/2022 at 4:40 AM, Bionic_Flea said:

Wow.  That brought back a lot of memories and trapped me for about an hour!

 

[lemming]

Ran across this interesting quote from _eeek_ on March 20, 2012

 

"I don't know about anyone else, but I think this is great news! Jeez, I ran the whole thing just for fun - and it was a lot of fun! Not only do fun new stuff, I get e-merits now, AND there is a Null the... Taskmaster? Uhh, Gabriel the Gull? Well, I don't know. But there is a guy who keeps track of things for me, and I'm very glad to hear that (The more Nulls in this game, the better, I say!). "

 

Was "Null the Gull" wandering around back then?

 

(And apparently, I was Lemming_NA back then...)

Edited September 23, 2022 by lemming
too much e

[lemming]

Huh, just checked the wiki on Null.  Must have been during one of my breaks from the game.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Null_the_Gull

[BlackSpectre]

On 9/19/2022 at 5:21 PM, The Philotic Knight said:

Well... f#$%. 😒

Hey PK, do not despair overly much. There are some problems with the SQLlite database that are hard to overcome and the version you've been working on is still sorely needed. Mainly, the SQLlite version lacks nearly all of the photos linked from third parties like PhotoBucket, which are the major sources for images posted at the old forums. It's kind of a bummer because most of the time players posted code (binds, pop menus, mods, etc.) they just took a photo of the code and posted the link. This means the SQLlite version does not have any of this extremely important information. It's just gone. Consider these 2 "duplicate" pages from the old forum:

 

SQLlite: https://cityofheroes.dev/liveforumarchive/topic.php?threadnumber=277110

 

WayBackMachine: https://web.archive.org/web/20120906214313/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=277110

 

If you look closely, the SQLlite version doesn't even have all of the text, let alone the necessary images. And from my own browsing of both versions, missing information is not an uncommon thing with the SQLlite version.

 

However your files, PK, contain nearly all the images and the complete text. There is still a need for your old forum data and expertise.

 

What are some things you could do?

1) just continue on as you were. Finish your project and put it up on the web.

2) use the SQLlite version as a framework to parse your files to include the missing information and images into the SQLlite version (kind of combine yours and theirs). This might also be faster.  

 

I don't know, just throwing some things out there, PK. Perk up, we still need ya!

 

 

 

[Vanden]

I do still hope either @Michiyo or @The Philotic Knight are able to get search working for the old forums. They're kind of a bummer to browse now, since all the easily-accessible posts keep talking about the end of the world.

[Michiyo]

8 hours ago, Vanden said:

I do still hope either @Michiyo or @The Philotic Knight are able to get search working for the old forums. They're kind of a bummer to browse now, since all the easily-accessible posts keep talking about the end of the world.

Searching "works" it's just not the best experience right now.  Entire weekend was a wash due to a pretty bad migraine, and work has been beating my head in recently.  I am working on improving everything when I have the ability to though.

[Zhym]

This is fantastic.  A deep drive down memory lane!

 

I assume that making quote tags work is somewhere in the to-do list.  It'd also be cool if we could link directly to posts. (I just stumbled across Positron's "All that crap is grey to me, no XP" post, for example.  I can link to the thread, but not the post.)  And it'd be really great if the archive had the same look and feel as the old forums, for extra strong nostalgia sake, but I'm just getting greedy now. :)

[_NOPE_]

On 9/26/2022 at 2:25 AM, Vanden said:

I do still hope either @Michiyo or @The Philotic Knight are able to get search working for the old forums. They're kind of a bummer to browse now, since all the easily-accessible posts keep talking about the end of the world.

I had a plan to get search working via google... but I couldn't afford a server big enough to host all the files.

[Oubliette_Red]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:50 AM, lemming said:

 

 

 

[Hyperstrike]

1 hour ago, Oubliette_Red said:

 

 

[BlackSpectre]

9 hours ago, The Philotic Knight said:

I had a plan to get search working via google... but I couldn't afford a server big enough to host all the files.

If you still want to do that, I'd ask the Homecoming devs for space on the servers to set up the Old COH forums. It's an important enough resource for all homecoming and COH players that I'd bet they'd figure out a way... Or if you don't want to bother the devs, then ask Reddit... I bet someone out there has the resources you'd need...

[_NOPE_]

1 hour ago, BlackSpectre said:

If you still want to do that, I'd ask the Homecoming devs for space on the servers to set up the Old COH forums. It's an important enough resource for all homecoming and COH players that I'd bet they'd figure out a way... Or if you don't want to bother the devs, then ask Reddit... I bet someone out there has the resources you'd need...

I believe that I reached out to both the HC and Titan teams... crickets.

[BlackSpectre]

Surprising. Well, you never know. Things might have changed. You could try again. You just need 1 TB of space, right?

[Ravenwulfe]

Holy crap. Seeing this I was able to find a few of my old guides including the guides I wrote for the SoA and Imperious Strike force from yonks ago. Need to see if I can find the other guides I wrote because I know I wrote a few. Hehe memory lane. Went by Silverspar but changed that forum handle to Lounegrou at one point. Don't know why.

 

For the horrible curious my old SoA guide; https://cityofheroes.dev/liveforumarchive/topic.php?threadnumber=123905&page_no=1

 

and

 

Imperious SF guide: https://cityofheroes.dev/liveforumarchive/topic.php?threadnumber=123952#comment-671338

 

These guides are obviously horribly out of date now, but yea it was fun creating them back in the day.