Assuming MMB isn't coming back up:

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

I can see that this simple machines boards is set up in a general way. Is it possible to expose the content's backend as a semi-continually updating read-only copy so that (theoretically) any of us can do what you just pulled off?

Scenario I'm imaging: Strat got run over by a bus and the new MMF went down. Here's last week's mirror. I'll go just go throw up a copy...

Sure it wouldn't be that easy, but could this atleast work, in theory? Basically I've already trained myself to save everything I care about locally (and encouraged everyone else to do the same). But other people say weird things like "I don't like saving / searching local files (but they're using a computer?). I want it all just in a browser!"

And, uh. Thanks for doing this. 

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Concerning other boards melting: aDMg said "ENWorld's forum lost about the same timeframe amount of stuff ... an annoyance of this trade." and of course mythweavers just lost everything older than a year.

Prescient post is prescient: (its "m4)

It took a lot of research to get the full timeline:

f0) 2000-2002: Nascent, general forum only at http://boards1.wizards.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=42
f1) 2003-2006: Visit WotC's consolidated D&D forum at http://boards1.wizards.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=339
s1) Nevermind 4th edition made it http://forums.gleemax.com/forumdisplay.php?f=339
f2) 2007-2009: Visit WotC's official "green" -> http://gleemaxgleemaxgleemax forum.
m1)   2008: the community fled to brilliantgameologists.com
s2) Nevermind 4th edition Essentials (4.5e) made it community.wizards.com/forums/103131
f3) 2010-2016: Visit WotC's official Previous Edition forum (because 4e is nothing like 1e ,2e, or 3e)
s3)      WotC shuts down Candlekeep
m2)   2010: a person/company crashed BG forcing the creation of minmaxboards.com
s4) "D&D next" beta is over and the community feedback is ignored: 5e is released.
m3) a hack of minmaxboards causes a temporary hosting at ruleofcool forums.
s5) Nevermind 5th edition is too weak to handle rivals: http://company.wizards.com/sitemissing/community
s6)      WotC shuts down DnDTools.EU
m4)   2017: after more hax a person/company spooked minmax's owner forcing an ownership change
f4) Visit our new, new, new, new forum over at (wherever)

f=forum, m=migration, s=a naughty word that WotC does on their fans. What do you mean we're out of TP?

Keep in mind this was posted like 5 weeks before this crash.

Unfortunately I am semi-retired from optimization so I never noticed Strat portending technical difficulties & doom. Me and my wandering away from things for weeks at a time bit me in the ass.

[Stratovarius]

The forum is set to back up daily, although right now that does still end up with me. Prime also has access to the back-end and is the primary technical user.

But yes, we should look into keeping that data somewhere off-site as well, so that instead of this happening, where we have nothing to go on, someone actually has the data.

[sirpercival]

Another possible solution is to archive stuff in a site with a large amount of infrastructure... something like a github repo where we're storing everything in RST or MD files? I dunno, just spitballing here.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Github would work but might require more structure than I'm suggesting. I'm literally talking about running a script on the hosting server that grabs the data parts (but not usernames and passwords) and just tarballs it or adds/overwrites it to a .zip file in a read-only, publicly accessible FTP directory.

Then someone else who wants to be the technical lead throw up an empty simple machines forum, unzip that file, and BAM instant forum migration. Sure it means people have to know where to go, dig up and move anything since the last zip file was made, and remake their accounts.... but no scramble!

Obviously this is low priority since we are scrambling. Just the say-so of "yes we can and will do that" might put people's minds at ease.

[SorO_Lost]

I'm against everyone having a full copy of the forum for a range of reasons. As a scare tactic I can mention you will go from 1~2 guys keeping a secret to everyone accessing private forums (yes MMX had those), to maybe even accounts & PMs depending on how SMF stores things. But more honestly, people have treated the handbooks with respect and their open access also keeps the reason to repost them on your favorite forum down, but when it comes to copying an entire forum you can ban someone and they can turn around and repost the forum, with extras, and promise better moderation/uptime/bot-&-adfree/whatever to draw users. Heck, then can even create a method to merge and continue to populate their copy with any new thread submitted in the original on top of their own exclusive discussions, wouldn't that make you feel like you're missing out? Finally you run into pretty much the same problem we have with MMX, not everyone can access the information in a readable way and it's pretty spotty what someone else has put back online.

Instead, why not create a user-sided back-to-BB-code button? That'll allow people to instantly obtain the original formatting off cache sites for reposts. Then of course we can try to put people in charge up creating an archive. Obviously some quality control would be great and a lengthy discussion that'll draw some extremes but we the MMF can take it on our selves as a community project to mirror decent handbooks into a single zip/rar file.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

I like reasons. I respond well to reason. The private subforums / pm, etc could presumably be not copied. Perhaps that's a bad assumption. I hadn't considered the "bad competition" angle. Perhaps you are right. That gives me pause. The more I think about it... I was going to say that openness forces openness (people will post on the open, mirror forum rather than the closed one). But that's not necessarily true. People are sloppy.

I have many questions about such a back-to-BB-code button idea. Unless its automatically done and piped to a separate archive forum, cached sights won't be able to "use", because clicking server requests on cached pages doesn't do anything when the servers down. But hey, I'm for whatever allows portability because I really, don't want to have to move things again. I'm fighting my own disillusionment just translating half-html, half-bb coded text back into posts.

[SorO_Lost]

I have many questions about such a back-to-BB-code button idea.

All you need is to pull the proper div (aka the post) reconvert from <b> back to [ b ] and such using javascript buried in the header, sort of like the sites that already handle basic HTML to BB conversion except we can tailor the conversion to work with Prime32's added extras like spoiler tags, table2, etc. which probably fail on those sites.

Edit: for example (changed from one line to being spaced & tabbed out)

Code: [Select]

<div class="inner" id="msg_328">
    <div class="quoteheader">
        <div class="topslice_quote">
            <a href="http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=18.msg327#msg327">
                Quote from: PlzBreakMyCampaign on <strong>Today</strong> at 06:41:09 PM</a>
            </div>
        </div>
        <blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">
            I have many questions about such a back-to-BB-code button idea.
        </blockquote>
        <div class="quotefooter">
            <div class="botslice_quote"></div>
        </div>
        All you need is to pull the proper div (aka the post) reconvert from &lt;b&gt; back to [ b ] and such using javascript buried in the header, sort of like the sites that already handle basic HTML to BB conversion except we can tailor the conversion to work with Prime32&#039;s added extras like spoiler tags, table2, etc. which probably fail on those sites.
    </div>Needs a couple replacers ran on it to convert back to

Code: [Select]

[quote author=PlzBreakMyCampaign link=topic=18.msg327#msg327 date=1497480069]I have many questions about such a back-to-BB-code button idea.[/quote]
All you need is to pull the proper div (aka the post) reconvert from <b> back to [ b ] and such using javascript buried in the header, sort of like the sites that already handle basic HTML to BB conversion except we can tailor the conversion to work with Prime32's added extras like spoiler tags, table2, etc. which probably fail on those sites.Probably need a method to convert the quotes them selves over too and append everything together given out the forum displays it.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Hmm. So can this be done automatically and piped over to an archive board? That would solve private forums, but not the intense work required to dump back in the bb code through the front end. But you're saying that entry barrier is a good thing to prevent premature fragmentation? If so, I'm probably too close to the frustration of adding back in post by post into the front end to have an objective opinion of if its good or not.

I'd still feel better about it if there were an automatic way to read "start thread with thread name", "start post for user","stop post for user", and "end of thread" functions so that someone like prime32 could just pull the entirety of said archive board for wayback when and then feed it directly into the front end of a new forum via program. Then, users would just have to get whatever the internet archive missed recently via bing's cache of the bb code mirror.

It's still a pain to track down on bing, copy post by post, and then repost, but it does mean people like me don't have the daunting task of trying to reimport all the handbooks without formatting. I still am hoping I won't have to do that...

[SorO_Lost]

But you're saying that entry barrier is a good thing to prevent premature fragmentation?

I'm saying the community it's self has demonstrated a level of respect, ie your Handbook you post today isn't copied by someone else on another forum by tomorrow. Allowing people to recover the bb code off google cache is something with have to realistically look at (no offense Strat).

But, it's one thing to allow people to dig through a copy their favorite posts vs throw up an entire copy of an active forum that back ups to a git archive. It becomes to tempting to simply download the latest version and attempt to comb through it for information or maliciously put it up online. Posts don't make a community, the people do. MinMaxForum's success is based off the people from MMX coming over and allowing new people to sign up. Having MMF1, MMF2, MMF3, MMF4, MMF5, etc up trying to compete will just split the community up.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Understood.

So does anyone know if a start thread, start post, stop post, & stop thread delineation in the text for a hypothetical BBcode archive doable? It would seem to make a BBcode archive far more useful...

[awaken_D_M_golem]

(small part)

Here's a link to an mmB GitHub ---> http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=46.0