Archiving Board to Preserve Data

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sophian
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Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by sophian »

Hello,

I'm sure this question has been asked at some point, but I have been unable to find any posts about this subject. I'm looking to archive an existing Board to preserve the information and posts to either an offline database or program that can convert the phpbb files to be able to read and search offline. I have already created a local side version of the board using XAMPP which is fine. But I'm looking to be able to archive the information and put it in a format that can be searched and shared between computers without needing a offline server environment. Is it possible to create or convert a board to a searchable database or document in such a way? Does such a thing exist? If so any ideas where I could obtain this? Any help would be much appreciated..

Thank You,
Christopher
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Dog Cow
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by Dog Cow »

sophian wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 4:17 pm to be able to read and search offline. [...] Is it possible to create or convert a board to a searchable database or document in such a way?
What tool do you plan to use, or expect to use, to read and search this database?
sophian
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by sophian »

Thank You for your response. To be honest any tool that might work. Do you have a suggestion? I'm open to any kind of help I can get :)

I recently tried using HTTrack software to mirror my phpbb Board which kind of worked. It was able to copy the and convert the site to HTML. But my CSS formatting was unreadable. So the board is just basically the text without any format. Not sure exactly how to remedy that.

But if you have any kind of ideas I'm open to suggestions..

Thank You
Christopher
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warmweer
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by warmweer »

sophian wrote: Wed Sep 28, 2022 4:17 pm to be able to read and search offline. [...] Is it possible to create or convert a board to a searchable database or document in such a way?
You could always install it on your PC using a personal webserver.

Oops, you've done that and that's not suited for sharing).
An option is to export topics to pdf, but that's not exactly searchable either.

In a case like this, a free hosting service would be ideal.
Spelling is freeware, which means you can use it for free.
On the other hand, it is not open source, which means you cannot change it or publish it in a modified form.


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Dog Cow
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by Dog Cow »

sophian wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 3:53 pm Thank You for your response. To be honest any tool that might work. Do you have a suggestion? I'm open to any kind of help I can get :)

I recently tried using HTTrack software to mirror my phpbb Board which kind of worked. It was able to copy the and convert the site to HTML. But my CSS formatting was unreadable. So the board is just basically the text without any format. Not sure exactly how to remedy that.

But if you have any kind of ideas I'm open to suggestions..
You just gave me an idea. I know that both Mac OS X and Windows can index the text in documents on your hard drive, and then give you a way to search for documents. (Maybe Linux can too?)

You could use this feature, combined with HTTrack to convert the site to HTML. Just store all the HTML documents in a folder on your hard disk, and then use your operating system's search index ability to search. Use your web browser to open and read the HTML pages.

warmweer wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 4:05 pm An option is to export topics to pdf, but that's not exactly searchable either.
I don't know about other operating systems, but Mac OS X can index the text in a PDF and will return results inside PDF documents on the hard disk when searching. Of course, it must be text as text, and not an image of text.
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Ger
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by Ger »

I have converted an entire phpBB 3.x board to PDF files once. 1 topic per PDF. That makes the whole thing independent of any dedicated software like a certain PHP version with given modules, database versions, etc.

But like others mentioned: it depends entirely on what your purpose is.
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sophian
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by sophian »

Thank you Ger,

I would be very interested in how you converted an entire board to a PDF. Would you mind sharing how you did that? My intent and purpose is to just archive the board to a save the information to a static place. It does not have to be interactive or searchable... Just saved and archived..

Thanks for any help,
Christopher
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Mick
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by Mick »

You could convert the database to MS Access I suppose the result of which should run under any version of windows. I’m not sure how it would look but you could try it and see.
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by warmweer »

Mick wrote: Tue Oct 04, 2022 4:22 pm You could convert the database to MS Access I suppose the result of which should run under any version of windows. I’m not sure how it would look but you could try it and see.
If it's for private use then it's easy, but setting it up for use by many (simultaneously logged in) users is a pain (I'm still with Office 2010 and haven't a clue how well the newer versions perform). If it's going to be shared you might as well use a personal webserver.
Spelling is freeware, which means you can use it for free.
On the other hand, it is not open source, which means you cannot change it or publish it in a modified form.


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Mick
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by Mick »

As I saw offline database mentioned I assumed it was for personal use.
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by warmweer »

Mick wrote: Tue Oct 04, 2022 7:05 pm As I saw offline database mentioned I assumed it was for personal use.
So did I ( TS did mention : But I'm looking to be able to archive the information and put it in a format that can be searched and shared between computers without needing a offline server environment. )
Access is just fine (if the database is going to be distributed) but Access isn't free and not everyone has it (, and you'll still need the phpbb fileset to access the data in readable format.) A lightweight PWS takes less space than Access and is can even be put on USB stick to function.
Spelling is freeware, which means you can use it for free.
On the other hand, it is not open source, which means you cannot change it or publish it in a modified form.


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Ger
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by Ger »

sophian wrote: Tue Oct 04, 2022 3:26 pm Thank you Ger,

I would be very interested in how you converted an entire board to a PDF. Would you mind sharing how you did that? My intent and purpose is to just archive the board to a save the information to a static place. It does not have to be interactive or searchable... Just saved and archived..

Thanks for any help,
Christopher
Iirc, I roughly grabbed the information from the database much like viewtopic.php does, created a HTML template that's based on a A4 paper size and passed that to a html2pdf parser. It's purpose was simply to archive the info to a static storage for private use, so I didn't bother too much with nice styling and such. I ran the tool on my local server (PC) and could therefore ramp up the memory and execution times etc.

It's been a while though, not sure I still have the code I used back then. But I guess it's not too hard to recreate.
My extensions:
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Newest: FAQ manager for 3.2

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Mick
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by Mick »

@warmweer: The runtimes are free though and there’s always open office.
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Re: Archiving Board to Preserve Data

Post by warmweer »

Mick wrote: Tue Oct 04, 2022 8:42 pm @warmweer: The runtimes are free though and there’s always open office.
Oops, completely forgot about that (BTW there's also LibreOffice which I prefer, and has regular updates: OpenOffice is way behind).
I have used Access as database for phpBB, but haven't tried it with Open nor with LibreOffice.
Spelling is freeware, which means you can use it for free.
On the other hand, it is not open source, which means you cannot change it or publish it in a modified form.


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