1 Topic by Awi (edited by Awi 2009-07-24 12:02)

  • Awi
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Topic: How to make a backup from a whole webforum?

Hi,

I'm new to this forum. I am a registered member of a webforum with PunBB-software, probably version 1.2. I have no admin-rights there,  I am just a member.

I want to make an automatic backup of that whole forum to a USB-stick. Which software would you advice for that purpose? I don't need advanced options for that archiving, but I prefer easy-to-use, free software, with a clear help-function.

Maybe there is backup-software that is specific for PunBB-forums?

I use Windows-XP and a high-speed internet-connection and my computer is probably powerful enough for this archiving task.

Thanks very much in advance for all your suggestions!

  • User33
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Re: How to make a backup from a whole webforum?

If you have no admin rights or access to a webmin panel, you can't do that.

However, you could do a "superficial" backup by downloading the RSS feed (only PunBB 1.3) of every topic and grabbing each post's text (with a script). That'd work only with forums that you can view.

Also, you wouldn't be able to backup private user info (passwords, emails).

3 Reply by dolly

  • dolly
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Re: How to make a backup from a whole webforum?

You can use a sniffer which "sniff" all html pages.
Why do you want to do a such thing?

  • User33
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Re: How to make a backup from a whole webforum?

dolly wrote:

Why do you want to do a such thing?

Yeah. It's not practical at all.

5 Reply by Awi (edited by Awi 2009-07-28 10:21)

  • Awi
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Re: How to make a backup from a whole webforum?

Thanks Garciat.

dolly wrote:

You can use a sniffer which "sniff" all html pages.
Why do you want to do a such thing?

What do you mean with a 'sniffer'? Which sniffer-software is free available and user friendly?

I want to make a backup of a webforum with valuable information. I want that to have a safe copy in case data on that forum get accidentally lost or are intentionally deleted by the forum administrator.  Or in case the forum might be fully discontinued.

What do you think of 'offline browser utilities' like HTTrack and PageNest? Are they harder to use than a 'sniffer'?

  • sirena
  • sirena
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Re: How to make a backup from a whole webforum?

'Sniffer' is one word. Another more common one is scraper.

HTTtrack will work fine. Just be careful to limit it to scraping the one site, not follow all the links off the site.

And be prepared to take the chance that the web site or forum administrator might ban you from accessing the site again if s/he detects you scraping hundreds of forum pages using a tool like httrack.

Most system administrators don't like scrapers. Including me. If I see something like that happen without my permission, it's a permaban from the whole server on the scraper's IP address/IP range, and the forum user too if I find them out.