New Webserver, disappearing archives

[Admin]

Well, I give up on the migration of the old archived posts into the new forum format. After many hours yesterday and today working on it, the migration didn't quite produce the results that I wanted. HTML code didn't migrate, so the HTML code for images published instead of the images themselves. Also, if someone wasn't logged in when they posted to the old boards the poster's name simply was registered as "Unregistered User." Neither of these outcomes was acceptable to me, so I'm leaving the archives running on the old BBS system: http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2 .

 

[Patrick]

so I'm leaving the archives running on the old BBS system: http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2 .

As long as this can be access in the future then it's okay with me.

Thanks for all the hard work now go and enjoy the weekend.

PS. Was it possible that what you did today affected the board? I posted something around lunch in the Down Under section, that post is now gone. :shock: No prob, I'll repost it.

 

[Admin]

Yeah, that was the one post I lost as you posted it as I was backing up the database.

 

[J.Spin]

People are constantly drawing rash conclusions based on recent or the current season's weather/conditions. The more past info we have to look up and compare, the clearer picture we get. Throwing out those 5 seasons of reports would be a big loss.

Tony nicely summed up some of the reasons that I enjoy archiving my ski trip reports and weather data. Certainly a lot of it is for my own personal use, but contributing to the available information on past ski and winter weather experiences will hopefully be useful to everyone down the line. I'm glad the crisis of losing the data has been averted, and should the need still arise for manual data entry, I'm happy to throw my hat into the ring as a one of the volunteer team.

J.Spin

 

[Admin]

Well, after beaucoup effort on the part of two people, and a bit o'cash paid by yours truly, it's a fait accompli - the archives are now integrated into these forums, and have their own topics at the main Liftlines index. (Moving those posts to their current-forum counterpart categories places them at the top of the category as the "newest post," so I'm leaving the archives as separate categories.)

They're now included in this forum's search engine as well.

 

[Patrick]

Well, after beaucoup effort on the part of two people, and a bit o'cash paid by yours truly, it's a fait accompli - the archives are now integrated into these forums, and have their own topics at the main Liftlines index. (Moving those posts to their current-forum counterpart categories places them at the top of the category as the "newest post," so I'm leaving the archives as separate categories.)

They're now included in this forum's search engine as well.

IT'S GREAT MARC ... THANKS FOR ALL YOU GUYS HAVE DONE...

The fact that the old archives mentioned will now more easily accessible for the newbies to forum. All these posts are really a gold mine.

(Standing ovation)

=D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> \/ =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

 

[Admin]

Thank you, Patrick.

Well, after beaucoup effort on the part of two people, and a bit o'cash paid by yours truly, it's a fait accompli - the archives are now integrated into these forums, and have their own topics at the main Liftlines index. (Moving those posts to their current-forum counterpart categories places them at the top of the category as the "newest post," so I'm leaving the archives as separate categories.)

Well, the good news continues: the archive posts are now included in their current-forum counterpart categories. I've just got one more known bug to figure out.

 

[Tony Crocker]

While you're at it, I have a modest request.

There are now 32 pages in the western section and 65 in the eastern section. When I want to find some reports from, say January 2005, I have to start at page 3 (because of the ...'s) load each page in sequence until I reach the one I want. When I get to a particular post faster via the search function, I still can't directly view other posts from the same time frame other than via the above tedious sequential loading process.

This was already an issue, but will be more so searching the older archives, which were previously broken down into time periods. My recommendation would be to replace the ...'s with a box where you could type in a page number. Then you could zero in quickly on the timeframe you want to see.

 

[Admin]

While you're at it, I have a modest request.

There are now 32 pages in the western section and 65 in the eastern section. When I want to find some reports from, say January 2005, I have to start at page 3 (because of the ...'s) load each page in sequence until I reach the one I want. When I get to a particular post faster via the search function, I still can't directly view other posts from the same time frame other than via the above tedious sequential loading process.

This was already an issue, but will be more so searching the older archives, which were previously broken down into time periods. My recommendation would be to replace the ...'s with a box where you could type in a page number. Then you could zero in quickly on the timeframe you want to see.

That's admittedly PHP coding beyond my abilities. As a workaround, you can just change the start number in the address bar of your browser.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Yes, you can trial and error the post number to get to a general time frame. But:
1) You're still viewing one post (as with using the search function), never a page containing multiple posts for the same time frame.
2) The post numbers don't assure you of being in the section you want. For any given post number you have 90% chance (before admin's move to SLC) of getting an eastern report.

Maybe another way to look at this is to create a method to move from any post to the page it's on, even if you arrived at that post via search or post number.

 

[Admin]

Not post number, page number, as in the start page for viewforum.php. For example:

http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards ... start=1100

will display the topics within a forum beginning with topic #1100. That shows a list of 50 topics, beginning with #1100 and going through #1150 for forum #3 (Western North America), which corresponds to "page 23" of the forum. You can manually change that 1100 to any number you wish to jump around the forum quickly.

Going by topic number instead, as you thought I meant, will no longer be effective as PHPBB assigns topic numbers chronologically. That used to work fine for approximating the age of a post, but when all of those archived posts were migrated over to PHPBB they were actually given newer post numbers. As a result, when I first did it they appeared at the top of the list of posts, for PHPBB orders by post number. I had to monkey around with the PHP code in viewforum.php to get PHPBB to instead look at the posting time and not the post number to determine how to order the topics -- that's what was at first preventing me from merging the archive categories into the current categories.

Your latter suggestion:

Maybe another way to look at this is to create a method to move from any post to the page it's on, even if you arrived at that post via search or post number.

may be a bit easier to implement. I'll have to look into that, but understand that I'm always reluctant to modify the board code any more than I have to. The software is upgraded frequently to satisfy security concerns that crop up -- running a PHP-based, SQL database-driven forum is a security nightmare, especially when PHPBB is so widely used -- and any minor change to the out-of-the-box coding can stop an upgrade in its tracks, sometimes midway through and rendering the forum unusable.

 

[Tony Crocker]

The "start number" method does work to get you to a page. If you want to see page X, the "start =" number needs to be 50X - (1, or any number up to 50). For example, if you want to see page 20, a start number between 950 and 999 will get you there.

I'll quit complaining now. Integrating the archives has been a clear-cut net gain.

 

[Patrick]

Well, the good news continues: the archive posts are now included in their current-forum counterpart categories. I've just got one more known bug to figure out.

Somehow I just noticed that a few days ago. BRAVO AGAIN. =D> Funny, I've noticed a few of us have more than one user name (I've used three). :wink: I was also surprise that my first post was back in October 2001 in the Midwest section (I didn't remember that one). :shock: :lol: With the exception of the second post, I always took that I started writing on discussion as a initial reply to Frank's crazyness in April 2003.