getting archive.org UBB posts...

[woopwoop]

does anyone know how to go about getting archive.org UBB posts from an old website and importing them into an SMF (simple machine forum).

This is a website that I have bought that I found used t have an active forum and would be great to get these posts back.

I've sitecrawler software on mac, but The structure of UBB forums is weird and I guess the forum members DB with passwords etc. isn't going to be archive... I don't even know if UBB worked with databases?

 

[devolution]

It's probably unlikely that archive.org got all the posts (depending on how many)... Especially if there were members only forums not visible to the search engines. I would use Teleport Pro from the root address at archive.org and see how much you can get.

Failing that, try and track down the original owner of the site, he still might have (a copy of) the DB somewhere...

 

[Jeewhizz]

From memory, UBB generated flat file html files per thread, so you should be able to import the files from archive.org...

 

[woopwoop]

Thanks guys.

A lot of the posts and threads are still in there (about half missing) but I think that you're right that its a flat file structure.

Maybe I just have to go and do cut and paste a few hundred times.

I'll check out teleport pro - first time I've heard of it - hope it's not a problem I use mac

 

[Skinner]

Any offline browser to download all the pages, like teleport pro, then find someone good with RegEx to find someone to write you a set of regex to pull the pages apart and output sql queries.

The good thing with something like this, EVERY page will be made up the same way, making search routines a doddle.

You could do it manually, on each html file, but visit guru or scriptlance or something and pay a few quid for an automated tool

 

[woopwoop]

wow thanks for the advice

this is all a bit scary to me because it's the first time that I'm hearing about this stuff... I'm gonna look into it.

thx

 

[Skinner]

Explain you want a RegEx to parse html pages from a ubb forum and output SQL or Plain Text.

You may have to download the html pages from archive.org and upload them to your website, and have the PHP + RegEx Script parse them files.

Do some research on RegEx so you understand them fully