Website Downloader

[EricG1793]

I'm concerned about old YW forums content, about the old website, the older threads that could be deleted any time, etc.

I went to Download.com and found Website Downloader.

You can tell it to archive a web page, and to archive the entire home page (which archives the web page plus all of its subcontents) and saves it to your computer. It saves each page on the site to your computer. You can view the site through the program, and as you click each link, you'll be directed to your saved copy. You can literally save an entire website to your computer and be able to browse it in a realistic (live Internet connection with a browser) experience.

[Lee Enfield-Burke]

While I know about this kind of program, I think this is probably a step you don't need to take.

First of all, due to the way the Groupee website operates, you'd have trouble setting up a download. The Forum pages are built "on the fly" secondary to user demand: posts exist only as raw data preserved in the database until a user calls for them. This is done partly to save space... for the reason that if they were static pages (and if you tried to save them that way) they would take up hundreds of gigs.

However, you don't need to be concerned about message threads being erased any more. We don't have to do that over here: we have more than ample space to return all the archived posts to the main message sections and keep them permanently. (We're moving them back into the main sections now.) Additionally, the vBulletin system is very robust in the way it handles large numbers of posts. There are boards out there that have more than a million posts running live.

All 45,000+ of our old posts made the crossing from the old board safely: everything's here and we have multiple backups -- we back up at least once every twenty-four hours, and the backups are saved in secure online storage outside our own domain -- so there's no need to worry about preserving threads offline. Meanwhile, since the old site is scheduled to shut down completely on December 29, deletions over on that side started as soon as we were sure everything made it over here: they've been ongoing for days. (And we already have plenty of backups of everything over here, so all our content is safe.)

So don't worry about archiving. Everything's handled.

[EricG1793]

The download actually ran smoothly, and everything views really nicely and seamlessly (except for some avatars). It takes up 744 MB of space, which is manageable for me. But since everything will be forever on the new platform, I don't see the need to keep absolutely everything on my own computer; I'll just keep a few pages for the sake of remembering the appearance of the old forums.

Thanks for letting us know!