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As I posted when this new forum started, I took the liberty, back in June when the Lefora 'upgrade' was announced, to write a script to scrape as much of the old form as possible. Knowing how upgrades often go, I was actually surprised that what we ended up with over at Lefora was usable at all! However, the change to a new forum was necessary and I salute Nick for making the decision and the transition quickly.

That left a lot of valuable knowledge (as well as four years of fun) at the mercy of how long Lefora decide to keep it active. Not long, I'd guess.

So I have spend the best part of the last week working on the best way to make as much of the old forum available to us all permanently.

Sadly it isn't possible to simply import all those old threads into the new forum so a different solution is needed.

What I have now done is to design a prototype web page that can be uploaded to Nick's site and accessed from its own menu system.

I've mocked up a sample page here: http://imkickstart.com/link/thread.php

Don't bother clicking the navigation links yet because they are not active (although the resources ones are). They are just there for you to see how things might work.

Alongside designing this I have gone through every thread on the 1-75 part of the forum and put the model number referred to at the beginning of its title - so that we can see all the threads on a particular model together.

In so doing I have thinned out the number of threads from over 1500 to about 1000 by removing those that were in the wrong category (lots of those), were just reports of Toyfairs, had no replies or had no real 1-75 content.

Because the way Lefora stored pictures was (and seems to still be) rather bizarre, any that were uploaded to threads are no longer accessible, which is a huge shame. Many threads make little sense without their pictures, but mostly I have left them in because the following discussion was of interest. Where threads simply mean nothing without the pictures I have reluctantly removed them.

In all this I have not tried to edit or censor - just to end up with a more manageable and usable archive.

Comments and thoughts on the design of the page are welcome because once I commit to making the 1000 or so pages based on this template there will be no going back!

Martin


P.S. You can see which forum categories I managed to save in the top menu. I'll get to those ones later!

That looks really good, Martin. Well done, and a big thank you on behalf of all the members.
I don't know about other people, but I'm sure that I still have all the photographs I uploaded. That being so, if one of us can identify a photograph which slots into one of the gaps, is there an easy way of doing that? Would it need to be sent to you for uploading?

Much as I'd like to add the old pictures, the practicality is daunting. There are literally thousands of them and linking all those pictures up with all those web pages would be a full-time job!

Martin

Martin Avis wrote:Much as I'd like to add the old pictures, the practicality is daunting. There are literally thousands of them and linking all those pictures up with all those web pages would be a full-time job!

Martin

Martin

I am trying to access Pat's King Size listings. Is there a link please?

Thanks

Nigel

matchboxuk wrote:
Martin

I am trying to access Pat's King Size listings. Is there a link please?

Thanks

Nigel

I took the list of links directly from the old forum. I guess it is up to Nick which sites and resources are included in the list, but I'd be happy to add as many as people suggest.

Martin

Hi Nigel.
Pats Kingsize listings can be found in the quicklinks thread or from the links on my home page, the links will take you to pats home page and there you are just one click away from the kingsize pages.

Thanks, Martin. Future generations will appreciate all your work!

Just as an aside, I'm not really clear on where things on "Befora" (sic) are disappearing. Granted, I've only done a small test, but if I go to http://vintage-british-diecasts.lefora.com/ and then click on, say, the 1-75 page, I seem to be able to view all the messages and all the pics, and at least the pictures I tried are clickable over to their photobucket page.

Still a daunting task to copy it all, I'm sure.

Alan

Big Al wrote:Thanks, Martin. Future generations will appreciate all your work!

Just as an aside, I'm not really clear on where things on "Befora" (sic) are disappearing. Granted, I've only done a small test, but if I go to http://vintage-british-diecasts.lefora.com/ and then click on, say, the 1-75 page, I seem to be able to view all the messages and all the pics, and at least the pictures I tried are clickable over to their photobucket page.

Still a daunting task to copy it all, I'm sure.

Alan

Hi Alan,

The problem with Lefora is that pictures that were uploaded to their site (not the ones linked to on Photobucket) were somehow encoded by Lefora to make them uncopyable. It appears to have backfired on them a bit because after the upgrade those pictures were not available and even now you can only see them by clicking a link. Not ideal.

I have copied the links to all the Photobucket ones (and others that still display) and so long as they still exist they will show up on my new pages.

The fear over the future of the old site is simply that with all of us having now moved to here, traffic to the Lefora site pages has dried up and it is likely/possible that Lefora will eventually delete the site due to what it will see as lack of interest. After all, from their point of view there is no point in wasting precious web space on zero traffic.

Martin

Ahhh, now I get it, Martin. Thanks. As I said, I just did a small sample so I missed the ones you are talking about. 'Tis a shame, the whole mess.

Martin, I know there's masses still to do, but I wanted to thank you for all your efforts and hard work. The old threads are such a valuable resource and to preserve them for the future is important for many members now and those still to come. Of course there's also a big thanks to Nick for his hard work behind the scenes , the admins and of course other members who are toiling away like Naji and Ghosthunter. It's much appreciated!