Forum software

[El Gordo]

Certainly, it's a fantastic body of work that you've ended up as curator of. (And let's face it, great bodies are something of a rarity around here. ) I was just wondering if it would be possible to do a once-off, semi-manual, dump of each and every thread, to a flat piece of html. That would form a closed archive, and we could embrace the future in whatever form was most convenient. Again, I can imagine that the images might prove a problem.

And now I've just looked at the stats, and seen that there are 1,691 threads that would need to be archived.

Which actually, isn't that many. This forum has been going a long time but compared with many, it doesn't have a huge digital footprint. As mentioned, by far the biggest problem in terms of exporting/importing elsewhere is the space taken up by the pics -- but I wouldn't want to discourage them.

Anyway, my line of reasoning is about as valid as saying to a car mechanic "hey, why don't you just fix the pistons?" or something similar........

.....But one final thought -- if you end up with a solution that needs a lot of donkey-work (e.g. manual relinking of images or whatever) please shout and I'm sure we could put together a workers' cooperative of semi-computer-literate individuals to help out. (Equally, I can imagine you might prefer to trust major abdominal surgery to non-professionals than let us anywhere near your database. We won't be offended. )

I'm greatly touched by the offer, but if there really was a labour-intensive task like that I might just put an ad on elance or similar, and get someone in the backstreets of Bangalore to do it for $50.

Sleeping on it sounds like a good excuse for some strong cheese and a bottle of red before bed -- the answer might come to you in a dream.

Ha! How prescient. I can't be too outrageous as the teetotal in-laws are on the premises, but I have spent the last hour or so nibbling on strong Cheddar and a couple of glasses of even stronger Cotes du Rhone. Let's see what tomorrow offers.