Some of you may recall that before the last crash I expressed an interest in archiving the threads here at AHL. After modest discusson, no particular solution was realized. After this last crash, and the subsequent loss of all of the posts, I was wondering if this discussion might receive a bit more interest.
 
At this time, I have created a folder on my computer for saving threads in which I am particlularly interested. As far as I know, I have to save them a post at a time. "Book-keeping", in order to keep the posts from a single thread connected, is tedious and inefficient to say the least.
 
I was wondering if it would not be possible in some form, to have the host provide copies of periodic backups. For example; if THL is backed up every Friday at midnight, and each of those backups are archived for six months, it seems a small matter to make copies of a CD's or DVD's worth of backups. I would gladly pay a reasonable amount for such a copy.
 
Life is ephemeral, and I haven't shed any tears over what was lost. Still, I would dearly liked to have preserved some of it.
 
Does anyone else share this interest sufficiently to work on a 'plan'?
 
Paul

I agree with you gitano. i'm not sure how feasible your plan is, but something should be done to make sure we don't loose this valuble info. I detailed as best I could my SMLE project, and who knows if I will remember all the details a year or two from now, but with an archive, anyone can go back and check to see what I did and exactly how.
 
There are still several questions though:
1. Can we back up the site ourselves?
2. If the answer is yes in #1, is it just the text or does that include the entire site with images too?
3. Do we need to burn it to a cd often, or would it be better to just have a copy on a seperate HD so if the site goes down we can reload it easier than RB having to redo the entire site?
 
I'm just kicking ideas around, so if I'm way off here someone let me know.
 
Chris

My understanding is that Administrators will be taught to do system backups that can be saved to disc.  We were never taught to do this before, but with all that happened I think it's time to take that step.
 
For my own plans:
 
I just re-built my computer and have a fairly large hard drive (140 GB), a CD RW drive (need to download XP compatible software) and have plans to add a writeable DVD in the near future.
 
With this in mind, selling backups at the cost of doing them is quite feasible; however, I'm not sure that I'd want to do this for several hundred people because it would be fairly tedious.  
 
The other thing is that it would most likely be a complete backup, and I'm not exactly sure how useable it would be on a PC.  I'm also not sure about security/copywrite related issues, so I'll have to check up on that.
 
We're just getting started again, but we're working on making sure that kind information loss doesn't happen again.
 
Thanks,
Az

That makes perfect sense to me Az. Sounds good if the admins can make backups on thier own machines. The more spread out the backups (read more redundant), the better.
 
Bye the way, I too have a CDRW drive, but just becasue I have one doesn't mean I would back up 100+ cd's to send out to people every month or so. No way, no how. Too much time and effort.
 
Chris

I have the physical capability to "back-up" THL on my system. While certainly one solution, and a solution appropriate for THL as a whole, it was not my suggestion that everybody at THL receive, as a matter of course, monthly backups. Instead, I suggest that backups can be had for a cost that covers the time and materials to generate the CD or DVD.
 
Personally, if given the access and shown the process, I would be willing to provide such a service on a "on demand" basis. In other words, if someone contacted me and said they would like a CD made of all of the "Reloading" threads, or say all of the "Relaoding" threads from the last 5 weeks, then I could provide that for the cost of materials and shipping.
 
This is a separate issue from any systematic, archival backup of THL. Possibly, they could be integrated, at least until there was a "problem" identified, but the issue of "saving for members" is, from my perspective, separate from necessary "systematic backup".
 
Paul

Good point. I see, well that sounds like the start of a good plan to me. I guess all thats left is to figure out the best way to back things up, and if it is allowed.
 
Chris

I was just thinking, after reading your posts, that U might be thinking a bit big...
My meaning is that these posts are just clear text right? Is is the software that
powers the site that makes it look good. Why not make one backup of the site
software on CD, once it is stable. Then once a week or so just ask the
webserver admin to email u a zipped copy of all the posted texts ever?

These zipped text files wil be very small, small enough to email. Or better yet
just posted somewhere on the server for download. I know of sites that does
this and these zip files are +- 2MB for one year of posts...

Of course, of site backups wil then be every where... :) But it should make
crashes a bit easier to handle. Note: The user info should never be publicly
avalible. U will not beleave how many site gets that wrong.. :)

Limpo

That sounds fine to me. I wonder how hard it would be to just back the text up from say the archives portion of the site. It is all pure text and should be easy to save. It wouldn't be as good as plain text, but close, and anyone could do it.

Not all of the valuable info is "pure text". In fact, probably close to half of the threads I would want to save have images associated with them, and images require lots of memory. However, your point is well-taken, and it is precisely to discuss and consider suggestions like this that I started this thread.
 
Paul

Afte the first of the year I am getting a new computer that will have a CDRW so I'll be able to save some of the threads that I want to. This is a good idea because alot of valuable info was lost this last time.