The SOTW Forum Archive Project

[Pete]

I've volunteered for the task of creating an archive of the old Sax-on-the-Web Forum.

* I have electronic archives of the SOTW Forum from January 2002 to January 2003 (the end of the old forum), PLUS I have an archive of the "original" SAXJAZZ eesites forum and a zipped archive of the old mouthpieces archive topic.

* I've been playing with the Internet Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/) and I've been able to access even MORE SOTW Forum stuff dating back to 1999.

I've currently completed about 1/2 of the table of contents for this project -- and I've been working on it for 3 months!

I should be able to merge all of this onto a phpBB forum -- even this one -- if I try hard enough. I'm going to have to set up a MySQL box at my house to do this -- and I'm not exactly an SQL "guy" :twisted:

If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this, any comments or requests, please post here!

[Pete]

I've finished with 90% of an archive of all the old SOTW posts for the Keilwerth category -- posts stretching back to June of last year. I essentially need to add some finishing touches to make it "look and feel" like the old forum.


* Why Keilwerth first?
- As mentioned in the Keilwerth Forum (http://saxontheweb.myforums.net/viewforum.php?f=6), below, I'm working on a Keilwerth page for my website :)

* Why not in phpBB (this forum's) format?
- I'm working on it. Converting from eesites to phpBB is relatively difficult and I haven't had enough time to pour over the phpBB manuals. I should be able to add a search feature, though, even if I can't get the archive into phpBB format.

* Why only one topic so far?
- That's probably the most interesting thing. I have about 14 months (total) of computer backups of the SOTW old forum. I had initially been copying topics and pasting them into an Excel spreadsheet (it's the only app I have both at home and at work). After it got to be 30mb in size, I started getting out of memory errors, so I started pasting it into MS Access. Same problem. so I decided to do one topic at a time. This isn't as convenient, but it works.

Anyhow, the Keilwerth archive should be ready later this week and then temporarily posted to my website. I'll post a link here when it's ready.

[Pete]

It's ready:

http://www.saxpics.com/sotw_archive/keilwerth/test.htm

ALL of the 150 or so Keilwerth articles from the commencement of the Keilwerth topic on June 3rd, 2002.

It's got a somewhat lame 3rd party search engine on the "main" page. If you have a better code, please send it to me.

Mind you, this is phase I of this test. When I've completed archiving each topic from the old Forum, I'll be categorizing them (needed for topics that have over 500 subjects, like "Alto Saxophone") -- that's phase II -- and I'll also be cross-listing some posts/topics -- that's phase III.

Enjoy!

[MusicMan]

Pretty cool, Pete...thanks for making the investment of your time.

Now about that Buescher section... :lol:

[max]

Wow - very cool!

SML soon! That way you can also fix the SML links on your pages at the same time! :wink:

(dontcha hate it when you do something cool and then everyone says, "great! now do MORE for me!") :?

Sorry...

[Pete]

Well,

* The Buescher section -- the actual topic from the old Forum -- is WYSIWYG: the topic was only around for the last weeks of Feburary, so you can just go to the old forum and see it :)

Oh, you mean getting all the Buescher posts from the Vintage Saxophones area into an archive? That'll take a bit :mrgreen:

* The SML area has the possibility of being archived fairly soon. I can do a topic or two a week, depending on my workload. I had been doing them in sort-of alphabetical order, but made an exception for Keilwerth, because I'm working on a Keilwerth page for my website.

[Pete]

I just finished an index for all the SML posts ever (that's from late 2000 or 2001). 259 topics. :lol:

[max]

Coooooooool... :D

[Pete]

I've finally finished the index for the SOTW Forum Archives. That's approximately 70 topics (e.g. "Vintage Saxophones"), about 14,000 threads (e.g. "What's a Conn New Wonder?") and somewhere around 700,000 posts (e.g. "A Conn model made in the early 20th century"). The index alone is a 7.1mb Excel spreadsheet.

The second part of the fun now begins and I'll be trying to get these into a format like the Keilwerth archive I've already done. I anticipate this phase of the project to be done in two or three months, as I get time. I also want to finish my Keilwerth pages and do some really kewl Java and stuff with 'em, so I'll finish that off first.

[Pete]

I've finally finished the archive of the old forum's SML 'board. It's currently located at http://www.saxpics.com/SOTW_Archive/sml/ and has all the posts from the start of the SML 'board from 1999 on.

The new "temporary" index is located at http://www.saxpics.com/SOTW_Archive/

I may not be posting any more of these until Harri finds a permanent server for these archives: the SML archive was about 9mb. I tried to do one for Selmer and it was 134mb.

Enjoy!

[max]

Wheeee... SML archive! :D

Thanks!

[Pete]

Quoting myself:

It's taken me a few months, but I've finally got all the Selmer threads from the old Forum online. Additionally, I "tweaked" some of the code I was using, so if you use the search engine, you'll get fewer, but more accurate hits (only for the Selmers -- the other sections still have a few problems. Sorry).

So, y'all get 636 threads from the dawn of the Selmer topic on the old 'board.

I'm also slowly catching and deleting the old sales posts that are listed in there. I don't think you want to respond to a four-year-old sales ad!

Linkage: http://www.saxpics.com/sotw_archive

Enjoy. E-mail me if you find a link that doesn't work.