Archive HTML version of forum

[vasilicus]

So I have this forum that got really really big a few years ago and had a lot of meaningful, fascinating, and absolutely hilarious posts from my best friends.  There's a lot of history in that forum.  Unfortunately it's been dead for the last year or so.  GoDaddy is charging me $10 a month to keep it going and I don't think it's worth paying $10,000 over the course of my life to keep it up, so it has to die sometime...

I know, though, that if I just take the database I'm never going to read it again.  And that's a shame because it really picks me up on a rainy day to go back to those happy times and great stories and discussions.  What I'd really like is an HTML version of the forum in its current state that I can just browse through in a logical fashion.  Nothing fancy, no interaction necessary, just the ability to go back and view a snapshot in time of the forum without having to pay $10 a month to keep it up.

I don't remember much web programming stuff anymore since it's been a while, so minimal coding and time investment would be best.  Thank you very much for your help and thank you SimpleMachines for giving me the ability to make this forum that did so much!

[Arantor]

You're planning on it being up for 83 years in total? o.O (Even if you factor in $10/year for domain registration that's still like 76 years)

OK, there's no cleanly automated way to build such an archive. There's always the Internet Archive if you're listed (it automatically records websites on the internet and keeps them for posterity) and if so, you don't really need anything else

Failing that, there's always ugly solutions like using wget to archive things but that can cause trouble to set up, since it's not really designed for unique sites.

[vasilicus]

Also, I have another website, so if just popping the forum over to another website is easiest that would be ideal so it could still be around, although hopefully without all the SEO (people wrote some things on there that they may regret at a more mature age).

[Arantor]

If it's online, Google can and will find it and it will be searchable. Yes, you can ask Google not to, but there are other search engines that don't respect the robots.txt requests.

[vasilicus]

That's fine.  I could make it less identifiable with a few quick changes.  I'd make them now but I'm getting rid of it anyway so there's no point.  But if there were a quick way to pick it up from its current GoDaddy host and move it to some obscure URL on my other host, that would be ideal.

[Kindred]

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Hosting_-_How_do_I_move_my_SMF_forum_to_a_different_host

[Shambles]

If there's only you that requires to (re)read the contributions, set up a home "server" like xampp and add your database to a local SMF system; that way, you can read it to your heart's content.

[nolie]

Why do not you change hosting? Search a free version and redirect your domain! 

[vasilicus]

@Shambles could you give me some step-by-step instructions for how to do that?  That sounds like what I want to do.

[kat]

Here's the XAMPP website.

https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html

They also have a forum.

https://www.apachefriends.org/community.html

[Digharatta]

Hello,

Here's a command line for Wget to download an archive HTML version of the forum:

wget -k -m -E -p -np -R index.php?action=mlist*,index.php?action=help*,index.php?topic=*.msg*,index.php?action=search*,index.php?action=login*,index.php?board=*sort=last_post*,index.php?board=*sort=subject*,index.php?board=*sort=starter*,index.php?board=*sort=replies*,index.php?board=*sort=views*,index.php?*wap2*,index.php?topic=*prev_next=prev*,index.php?topic=*prev_next=next*,index.php?action=dlattach*,index.php?action=profile*,index.php?action=reminder*,index.php?action=register*,index.php?action=credits*,index.php?action=who,index.php?action=recent*,index.php?action=calendar*,index.php?action=stats*,index.php?*action=.xml*,index.php?action=printpage*,index.php?action=verificationcode*,*PHPSESSID* http://example.com/forum/ [nofollow] -o log.txt

Good luck!