Archive old threads

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:46 am

I've talked about this before. I was reading a thread on Linuxquestons and was thinking that if we could get an archive section, where the threads are presented in only text that would help Ben on bandwidth. The other idea I had was to just take threads that are over a year old (and no longer posted in) close them and we have some people take the info from them and move it over to Doomportables, someone talked about this with the old forum as well.

I'm hoping that a lot of you support this. I'm also hopping that Gannon will be able to push this forward when you gets back from Europe.

nos_slived · Post by **nos_slived** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 12:55 pm

I've been thinking about this for a long time.

Lucretius · Post by **Lucretius** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 12:58 pm

I've been thinking about it even longer!

This could also be aplied to the "READ THIS FIRST" threads...or t'other way 'round...

soundwave · Post by **soundwave** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:04 pm

I'd say make a few senior members temp-mods, so they can go through the pages and pages of old threads, organize all the info, and gather it all together. It'd take more than the current 3 to get that done, hence the temps, who would be told not to mess with current affairs, and they would just be temps so they could go through threads, and delete them as they go.

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:05 pm

yeah? Well, I've been thinking about it longerest

seriously, I think Ben should consider a new host for the site. This Place has unlimited space/bandwidth (ok, it's really only 2TB of space

) for ~$30/year, I think it was. It's a little slow, but I think they are upgrading their servers, and it's not unusable or anything.

SpongeBuell

Lucretius · Post by **Lucretius** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:13 pm

I think soundwave's plan (hell I'm just gonna call you SW man)...ok then, SW's plan is a good tempory fix. Get some stuff done here and now. Or is it here and there? Anyway. Take any important info and put it in a text file. These files can be kept in back up by select members of the community, or anybody who wants to. Also use them to make a few "READ THIS FIRST" threads...

The we can move onto Spongey's plan later, when we, and Ben, have had more time to plan it out. Budget, logistics, closing this forum for good, helping people move, moving important threads/info...etc. Whadaya think guys?

G-force · Post by **G-force** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:22 pm

Sounds like a good idea. But we have had this idea before with the old forum and nobody would do it. Everybody wanted to do it but nobody would actually do it

I would gladly help in any way I can, hopefully this will finally happen. There really isn't a whole lot of info when you get down to it. Just simple noob stuff. It should be pretty easy.

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:23 pm

no, we will not close this forum for good, phpBB has a nice backup thing where you can backup everything and put it back on in another site, or the same site if your server crashed, whatever... you wouldn't even need to re-register!

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:35 pm

@ G-force, I cant remember if it was Gannon, Spongebuell or someone else that was going to do that. Jack and I offered to run through the old forum's threads and find useful info. I dont know what happened it probibly fell to the waist-side.

I'm pushing for this on the new forum becuase Ben's mentioned his bandwidth is growing. So I'd say take the old threads close them and have them backed up on Doomportables which has limitless bandwidth so we can store the info there.

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 2:22 pm

Sparkfist wrote:have them backed up on Doomportables which has limitless bandwidth

Not anymore, now that we switched to the new site after the DNS expired. It's not that complicated, all that has to be done is have gannon or Ben make a backup of the forum, which is ~75MB and load it back up if Ben decides he wants to have a new server.

goodie · Post by **goodie** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 2:37 pm

I don't see why we need to do anything. Forums are mostly text based, so they really don't use very much bandwidth. It's probably the other parts of his site that use up more bandwidth.

Post by **bicostp** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 2:38 pm

Maybe we could set up a wiki system on another page, such as a free web host account or something like that. That way we can have all the information in a consolidated space without using forum bandwidth.

Maybe we could turn on the forum trimming (or pruning) feature on PHPbb. In the administration panel there's an option for automatically deleting old threads, and a time variable can be set. The only section I suggest doing this to is Forum 42, which is at ;least 20-some-odd pages long now.

Another possibility would be a "Newbie Help" thread in each section of the forum. Each thread would be a sticky, or even an announcement, and it would include information such as power requirements, scren compatibility, AV outputs, and other pertinent information to the section it's contained in. I believe this would help reduce the number of redundant newbie threads we have. While it's OK for them to come and ask for help, It gets kind of ridiculous to have 5 people post "search" in a thread. (I guess it's just easier to ask a question than it is to research the answer.)

There's my 2 cents worth.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 2:59 pm

A wiki doesnt sound bad at all. The only thing that would complicate this is that we'd have to move some of the accounts we have here over to it so that we have some people capible of updating it. Personally I think it would be best to have only Senior Members have that ability, reason being we've been here longest and have the most knowlege.

As for the Newbie faq or threads. Its something we've done like in the Screens forum. However we still have new people post the same question over and over.

Doofus · Post by **Doofus** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 3:33 pm

A wiki sounds like a good idea, however, archiving the forums, for the sake of saving bandwidth, isn't really going to help his bandwidth at all. Most viewers have visited a phpbb forum before, and have all these template images cached anyways. Seriously, his website takes more bandwidth than his forums you guys...

nos_slived · Post by **nos_slived** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 5:49 pm

No, the forum is where most of the bandwidth is used. Ben said it himself when we were discussing his bill.