# What happened to my thread?



## Edena_of_Neith (Feb 4, 2002)

I have not yet backed up the 1st IR thread.
  I closed it as requested and started a 2nd thread, which is currently in progress.

  But the first thread had 8 pages and 290 posts.
  Now, it has 2 pages and 67 posts.

  Is there any way you can recover the lost majority of it?
  It took me quite a long time to create some of it.


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## Piratecat (Feb 4, 2002)

I'm _really_ upset about this. I closed the original, then added links. I then copied it over to "In Character." While doing so, I got a "timed out - exceeded 30 seconds," the first one I've gotten. I tried again, and got the same thing, but when I looked at In Character I noticed that it had copied it twice. It looked like all 2000+ posts were in each, so I deleted one.  I had specifically copied, instead of moved, so that if anything happened you'd have a backup.

The tech Gods are not smiling on me.

I don't think there's anything we can do. I have no idea why it pruned the original thread, no idea why it didn't work right, but I'm _really_ sorry.

Moral of story: due to the lengths of some of those posts, we'll stop the IR threads earlier, and they won't be moved until you've had a chance to save them.


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## Edena_of_Neith (Feb 4, 2002)

-


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## Edena_of_Neith (Feb 4, 2002)

It is not your fault, Piratecat.  Not your fault.

  Is is obvious from what you have said that there was a computer system error.
  The ENBoards have been plagued by those since they were founded by Eric Noah.

  I know computer errors ... I make them all the time.

  (looks around at those here)

  Piratecat is a good moderator.
  He has supported me.
  He has been a friend.
  He is the primary reason I came back to the ENBoards, after I became frightened of how people spoke here and left for 5 months.
  I like Piratecat.

  Don't blame Piratecat for a computer glitch.


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## Morrus (Feb 4, 2002)

OK, as of now I am going to turn off ALL non-essential functions of the boards.   Hopefully that will help.


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## Ashtal (Feb 4, 2002)

*There should be a second moral, here...*

While it is upsetting to see so much work lost due to a technical glitch, it's important to remember that if you (in the general sense, not just Edena) do post very large pieces of material that the EN World not be your primary means of storing this work.  

Just like you should back up any work you do on a computer, be sure to back up stuff you want to keep that you've created online.  It might even be better to craft said material offline in a text-editor, saving it there, and then cut & pasting it into the post (or vice versa - writing it in here and then cut & pasting it into a document file on your harddrive or disk).  I'd do the former though - I'm angry enough when I lose a regular post on a forum board due to net hiccups.  I would hate to lose a major piece of effort!

So, save once, save often!  Off-site back ups are your friend.


Ashtal


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## Lady Diamond (Feb 4, 2002)

I just happened to see this, so I hope what I have to say helps out a bit, I Hate to see good stories lost because of glitches or some other matter.  

A little intro, I hold a hobby domain and a UBB license, I work as a network analyst for a major corporation and do a bit of science fiction/fantasy writing as a hobby.  I know the pain of storywriters, boards administrators, network traffic issues, and domain holders.  

Here's what I do, when I have a story thread going and I want to make sure that the work that everyone puts into it stays relatively "safe" somewhere, you might give this a try, I hope it works for you:

Depending on your PC operating system and your browser (I'm assuming you have a Windows OS and either IE or Netscape) you can pull up say, page 1 in your browser, and click "File", then "Save as", then save the page on your hard drive.  You can do this with each page, and it saves images off the page into a folder, and also a copy of the html into an html file.

If you wish, depending on your situation, you can perhaps find some "friendly" free site on the internet and upload your html pages to it so that people can see them if need be.  Or, you can simply keep them on your hard drive, and depending on your knowledge of html you can edit out some of the icons, buttons, and such, and simply save the text.

You can save each boards page in this way (you do need to do each page seperately and name each page uniquely) once it fills up an entire boards page or intermittently if you wish.

I don't recommend this often, and it Is best for all concerned that you do your page backups during some other time than prime time (U.S.A. daytime) to reduce strain on the boards server.

Sorry this is long, I merely hope it helps you out in some manner.

Regards,

Lady Di


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## Piratecat (Feb 4, 2002)

Easy way to save the thread:

From the forum page (listing all the threads in the forum), right click on the thread title (or on a page number for long threads.) Select "save as". Rename the html document with a unique name, then save it.  Works like a charm.

Edena, I believe that part of the problem might be the length of some of your posts. If possible, please write shorter posts, splitting each really long one up into one or two shorter ones.

Thanks!


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## Lady Diamond (Feb 4, 2002)

*chuckles*  same idea, I like your response better though, it was much shorter.


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## The It's Man (Feb 5, 2002)

Maybe it's still in someones chache or whatever.


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