col
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Post by col on Nov 29, 2017 15:27:17 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
As many of you will have noticed, I bumped several threads, quoting posts with lost Photobucket images, but with the images resurrected in my quote.
To resurrect the image, I just appended the URL with '~original'. But, this is almost certainly a temporary fix until Photobucket realise their commission and prevent this from occurring. This is probably a very limited opportunity to revive/rescue images from those damaged/destroyed threads - some of them extremely valuable to this community.
Are we going to attempt systematic retrieval of these images (and threads), or are we just going to let them go?
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Post by newey on Dec 1, 2017 6:50:24 GMT -5
In the process of resurrecting these, one-by-one, the resurrector could, I assume, download a copy to his or her own drive or take a screenshot, so that we'd have a copy for posterity.
To attempt to redo every image over the 12 years of this board would drive us crazy. But it would be extremely valuable to at least fix everything in the schematics sections. That's at least a chewable amount to bite off.
Reality prevents me from undertaking this- after a brief respite, I'm back to 90+ hours a week at the ol' grind. Volunteers, anyone? If we could get several people to each do a chunk of it, it wouldn't be so much for any one person.
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col
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Post by col on Dec 5, 2017 23:16:40 GMT -5
Hi newey, Sorry to hear that you are having to work so hard. I don't know how you can work those kind of hours - I know I couldn't. I've been looking around for fixes/tools (which work). There are some code fixes available, but not all work or already incompatible. I have one whish works, but unfortunately it does not work with another image saving add-on. Anyway, the half-fix (which certainly helps) is a Chrome extension which reliably appends the broken Photobucket images with '~original'. This, at least, means that we can save whole pages (with the restored images), but it is still a page-by-page poccess (but no editing of image URLs required). Of course, to restore the images is a whole other issue, but saving/preserving them is the first step. We should work through this as systematically as possible. I'll save all the pages from the Design Modules section tomorrow. If other regulars to Gnuts would like to volunteer sections too (and indicate the areas here) we can work through this fairly quickly. You will need to use the Chrome browser, with this add-on/extension: chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg?hl=enWhere there the original image is available, it will automatically display when using Chrome. Just save the webpage. Be sure to check afterwards to make sure that you are indeed saving the images along with the page. Of course, we will need to get the save images/webpages to Gnut admins. This is not perfect, but at least images may be restored as required. I'll see if I can find a spidering tool to do this. I have one, but it downloads the placeholder image, not the one substituted by the extension.
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col
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Posts: 464
Likes: 24
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Post by col on Dec 6, 2017 19:15:24 GMT -5
OK. I've downloaded all the Design Module pages (irrespective of state). Most pages had missing images, and I've recovered most of them. The only ones missing are images lost for other reasons.
I noticed with Chrome (unlike Firefox) that the download stops if you backspace to the board thread index - wait for download to complete. Something to watch out for (I double-checked all the saved files afterwards). I also noticed that a few images are displayed as thumbnails (which you need to click) in the downloaded files. So, the saved page does not contain the full-sized image. I skimmed through the downloaded webpages looking for thumbnails, went back to the original page, clicked the relevant thumbnails, right-clicked the full image, and saved that to my local file (I saved two copies: one to the directory containing all these webpages, and another to the image folder associated withe the page being saved). So, a bit of messing about there, but I only had to do this a few times.
It is still a bit time-consuming, but doable. I will need to Zip my local containing folder (so that it all becomes a single file to be unzipped later - sending a single file is immeasurably easier than sending a multitude of files) and get this newey or someone here else for safe keeping.
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