RIP AE No more - AE Lives again!!!

[MarcusF]

I'm very sorry to hear about your health issues, I hope things get better for you.

I've enjoyed these forums for years and have learned a lot from them.
It runs on SMF, should be fairly easy to move the whole thing to a new host without losing data.

[magorium]

It would be good to copy the existing database in some place, and being accessible even in read-only mode.
We already lost the old aros-exec with an incredible knowledge base and now it's again same, unfortunately.

Well, I had offered to help rescuing the old AROS Exec as well.

But some people prefer to watch things burn, I suppose.

It is not about watching anything burn, but your offer solves half the problem. Who is going to do the work of moving the site and setting it up? So far, not a single person has offered to take on the work of actually running and keeping it maintained.

Well, moving the site would depend on what needs to be installed at the destination to begin with (and what panel/software can be used, if any). Setting up SMF itself should not be that difficult to do (restoring a backup is another matter, though documented but, could proof not to be that easy as advertised).

Running it, I guess would be his (when accepting anyone's offer) responsibility thereby assuming keeping track of the dns records, domain  name, certificate(s) as well as hosting and indeed there would have to be someone for maintaining that (not really my virtue).

I can at least offer to help out moderating when things are running. For the other stuff I have no experience other then some fiddling locally with virtual machines meaning that I could try and take a shot at moving stuff but that it could end up badly and for sure would need some help with the host side of things (I know just enough to do some serious damage in/with my ignorance).

[o1i]

I am not the guy who likes forum software, but there seems to be a way to move a SMF forum to a static page:

https://mossiso.com/making-smf-static/

Might work..? And seems not to be too much effort.

[cdimauro]

Looks like. But who could try it?

[magorium]

I am currently at the P of LAMP.

But besides that, if it is so dear to your heart then make a backup yourself ? I've already done so last month (need to update that btw) and though it does not contain the attachments nor fancy graphics it does contain all the textual contents, nicely tucked away in a single html per thread topic (4.1 MB zipped).

Scraping the attachments and graphics is also possible for instance with selenium webdriver but I wanted to use my own solution but have not been able to get around to login properly (hence my LAMP setup to be able to debug that). So next is a SMF install and try to debug but when reached the stage of having a proper working SMF install I could just as well give those instructions at the link from o1i a spin).

[cdimauro]

I'm to P as well, but it stands for Python and not PHP (I had little experience in the past, but only for some backend stuff). And very limited L & A experience.
However if a single HTML per thread takes 4MB then it looks like an impractical solution (especially for the old AROS-Exec, which had tons of threads).


Anyway, the above solution still requires database access. Maybe it makes more sense to dump it and then if someone has experience with SMF he/she can recreate the forum somewhere else.

[magorium]

I'm to P as well, but it stands for Python and not PHP

rofl.

But yeah. For downloading the threads python will do as well (i wrote it in Pascal but you can just as well use bash (wget/curl) or something else though respect the website and not hammer it -> about 40 minutes for all threads with a delay of 1 second per thread).

However if a single HTML per thread takes 4MB then it looks like an impractical solution (especially for the old AROS-Exec, which had tons of threads).

No, not per thread  . I meant for /all/ threads.

Anyway, the above solution still requires database access.

Not for having the textual contents only, as an example that you can feed wget/curl: https://ae.amigalife.org/index.php?action=printpage;topic=1154.0

Then, the most difficult part ... how on earth do we count numbers... hmz... no idea 

Maybe it makes more sense to dump it and then if someone has experience with SMF he/she can recreate the forum somewhere else.

Having a (proper) backup makes more sense but does require a bit more work.

For moving SMF see also:
- https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?PHPSESSID=9f7046aeff43d82eaec4087219990df2&topic=317614.0
- https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Hosting_-_How_do_I_move_my_SMF_forum_to_a_different_host

And after which case the link from o1i could be used to make it dormant.

[cdimauro]

I'm to P as well, but it stands for Python and not PHP

rofl.

But yeah. For downloading the threads python will do as well (i wrote it in Pascal but you can just as well use bash (wget/curl) or something else though respect the website and not hammer it -> about 40 minutes for all threads with a delay of 1 second per thread).

However if a single HTML per thread takes 4MB then it looks like an impractical solution (especially for the old AROS-Exec, which had tons of threads).

No, not per thread  . I meant for /all/ threads.

:O Then it's ok. However... see below.

Anyway, the above solution still requires database access.

Not for having the textual contents only, as an example that you can feed wget/curl: https://ae.amigalife.org/index.php?action=printpage;topic=1154.0

Then, the most difficult part ... how on earth do we count numbers... hmz... no idea 

Indeed. The output doesn't look good. I don't like it.

Even the dump of my Telegram bot looks better (using Telegraph for storing the pages, which is very limited): https://telegra.ph/RIP-AE-37-comments-09-06

Maybe it makes more sense to dump it and then if someone has experience with SMF he/she can recreate the forum somewhere else.

Having a (proper) backup makes more sense but does require a bit more work.

For moving SMF see also:
- https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?PHPSESSID=9f7046aeff43d82eaec4087219990df2&topic=317614.0
- https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Hosting_-_How_do_I_move_my_SMF_forum_to_a_different_host

And after which case the link from o1i could be used to make it dormant.

This is the best solution to me.

However, the question is always the same: who could do it?

[amigamia]

Do we have the backups anywhere? I already pay for a hosting and I could try to integrate SMF in my LAMP hosting service. I have options to set add-on domains and/or subdomains to arosworld.org.

I may need to play with the settings of course.

[cdimauro]

It would be very good!


I think that only 4pLaY could do it: AFAIR he is the only one which has admin rights here.

[deadwood]

Do we have the backups anywhere? I already pay for a hosting and I could try to integrate SMF in my LAMP hosting service. I have options to set add-on domains and/or subdomains to arosworld.org.

I may need to play with the settings of course.

That (having read-only only of aros-exec) would be extremely appreciated!

[magorium]

Things are not going to happen automatically. 4play already expressed that.

So, in case there isn't already something worked out with anyone else I would suggest f.e. to amigamia to contact 4play in a pm and ask if he is ok for the one that wants to do it and ask 4play to backup his database (using the host software, the SMF documentation mentions not using the SMF backup function), the forum files and I assume the admin password for the SMF forums (or ask if he could add another user with equal admin rights to take over the installed SMF) and have all required information and files accessible somewhere. That is unless 4play wants you to do the backup yourself as well (in which case more/other details of the current hoster are required)

The destination requires LAMP, a database used for SMF and a user that controls that database. Then restore the original database to that, then the forums files, and run the repair script (note that there are specific instructions in which order to do that) and you should be done (in theory).

I got SMF running on my LAMP server but haven't come around yet making a backup and restore it to another LAMP server in order to see what issues you might be able to run into.

[ASiegel]

It is not about watching anything burn, but your offer solves half the problem. Who is going to do the work of moving the site and setting it up? So far, not a single person has offered to take on the work of actually running and keeping it maintained.

My offer for the old AROS-Exec included migrating the site. This is really not an issue.

Finding people interested in being admins or moderators is something to do once the data has been moved and the sites are back up and running.

[pixie]

I once moderated are, if needed I can help. But our community is quite well behaved

[Wildstar]

@Wildstar: people already moved on another site, which has already a sysadmin which is taking care of it.
IMO it should be enough to dump and database of this site and the old AROS-Exec, giving the possibility to access in read-only mode to the threads & comments, because it's a huge knowledge base.
The rest can be continued on the new site.
However the point is always the same: who could do that dump?

In any case, stirring up the dialog and so far has done precisely that.