I am pleased to have helped save the napoleon-series.org has been saved for the long term future, although this forum will replace the forum on that site, which cannot continue for technical difficulties. Hopefully forum members will migrate to this site and this will become just as lively (and civilised!) as the previous one. Please be aware that if you need to save any material from the old forum, you have until 1 February to download from it, then it will be gone!
Gareth,
It's a shame we will lose access to the archived posts. It includes insightful comments from some stellar contributors, some of whom are no longer with us. I will definitely trawl my key words. The problem is that you don't know what you don't know until you don't know it, if you know what I mean.
I realise that computer nerds and napoleonic historians are Venn diagrams with limited intersections. However, in these days of big data style cross-platform document-oriented database programs might there be some way of saving or exporting the raw data in some way that it can be re-purposed in the future?
Robert Burnham and I have had some tentative discussions about this. One idea that we have considered is copying 'significant' (broadly defined) posts into word documents, and creating an archive somewhere on this site. The issue is that this is a VERY low tech ,bad extremely laborious solutions. It's also not ideal in terms of searchability. The search bar at the top of the page will pick up the titles of word documents posted on the site, but is less reliable in terms of searching the content itself. An alternative would be to gradually repost existing discussions, but this doesn't create a comprehensive archive, and trying to keep the forum 'decluttered' is going to be a major long term challenge, which will probably be solved using the idea I outlined above. I am always open to suggestions though!
Hi Zack,
It depends on the relevant schema the data is held in. It should be possible to take a back up or export copy of the structured data, such that it can remain searchable in some other way in the future. If online on the series is prohibitive, we might be able to offer something like a CD of the dump with some kind of searchable front end?
It's been years since I've had hands on skills in that area but it shouldn't be beyond the wit if enough of us put our heads together. Manually curating, cutting, pasting etc sounds Herculean.
I think it would be criminal to lose that accumulated wisdom forever.
When I go to the Napoleon Series forum, which is supposed to be available for another month, this forum comes up instead. How do I access the old forum?
Hi Paul, if you Google 'Napoleon Series Forum' you will still be able to access the old forum site. Please bear in mind that that site will become 'read only' in due course.
Hi Zack, Just to confirm that the Forum Napoleon Series Forum will completely dissapear next month. It is being maintained on a very old system. In fact the web host is maintaining it on a very old server specifically maintained for it - at a very high (extortionate) charge per month, which is simply not sustainable. I believe that the hosting service have said that it cannot be converted, hence it will unfortunately go completely.
Hi Gareth, thanks for this. I thought it was going to last a little longer than that! We are going to need to come up with a plan to save the discussions then...
COIMBRA
The archives of the Napoleon Series are already offline. The active forum is sometimes on- and sometimes offline.
Nothing has happened yet, if having problems suggest contacting Bob Burnham