Its a real pity but finding archived material is hopeless. I suppose maintaining archives of this magnitude was a difficult and space hungry task but it really is unfortunate we can't refer people back to useful threads. Also I really did like having all my old posts to hand.
It also means the same stuff is trawelled over again and again... I noticed that again the people forum were discussing whther pets should be posted , this has been discussed to death and decided it was okay... if the archives were working this would have not happened.
I have wanted to go back to posts on certain landscape locations to get the details and of course they have gone... I wanted to find technical information on an old post and of course no chance.
I suspect this topic has been discussed here too.. but of course I can't find anything usng the search engine! yes i was using the google search.
It was always interesting to have a record of your own past posts.. which somtimes have been useful to have as a reference and refer to in other post..
could anything be done or has anyone any useful search tips?
Hi Jane,
We are working on this issue. Our objective is to move all archive posts back to the main forum -- 7 years of posts -- The main challenge is to have minimal performance hit.
All the best,
Fred
Also, if a particular thread(s) is that imporant to you, I would suggest using the "print page" button right above the first post in a thread and print the thread to a PDF. Then, save that PDF to a specific folder with nothing but those PDF, and you've always got the info to refer back to if necessary.
Scott Sewell wrote:
Also, if a particular thread(s) is that imporant to you, I would suggest using the "print page" button right above the first post in a thread and print the thread to a PDF. Then, save that PDF to a specific folder with nothing but those PDF, and you've always got the info to refer back to if necessary.
Thats a great idea Scott, I follow you up to the print page button but how do I then print to a PDF? There are lots of time I want to save something for later reference and cant remember the title or a way to search.
Scott Sewell wrote:
Also, if a particular thread(s) is that imporant to you, I would suggest using the "print page" button right above the first post in a thread and print the thread to a PDF. Then, save that PDF to a specific folder with nothing but those PDF, and you've always got the info to refer back to if necessary.
I've been doing this for the past few months and it's very useful. Although, it'll be nice to have threads back that I wasn't around to read...
Wickedfn4u wrote:
Thats a great idea Scott, I follow you up to the print page button but how do I then print to a PDF? There are lots of time I want to save something for later reference and cant remember the title or a way to search.
Thanks.
There's lots of drivers which allow you to print to pdf, even freeware. Best google for "pdf printer".
As a test, on Canon SLR board, I have brought back about 2 years of archived topics. I will be monitoring how well the new forum code reacts to the bigger table. Eventually I will bring back ALL archives and will close the archive pages. We will end up with more than 7 years of content!
I had to make a few changes to the way members reply to old topics though. If a topic is older than 366 days, it could be replied but it will not show up at the top of the board's first page. If the topic is newer than 366 days, it will.
Two observations: One, having the archives will simply give regular users something to link back to. It won't stop repetition of topics, most new people don't know about/are too lazy to use the search function; this is not unique to FM, it's common to all fora. Second, have you visited www.waybackmachine.org (aka www.archive.org)?
-- The main challenge is to have minimal performance hit.
