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Best ways to archive useful threads long-term?

Started by Austin Baker86 · · 👁 5 views · 8 replies

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Participants Austin Baker86loneraven25melloworca6steelskipper5Nicholas King
Austin Baker86 Austin Baker86 Active MemberOP
56 messages
joined Feb 2009
#1 ·
Is there any chance we could get a tool implemented on this forum that would allow us to export threads to PDF, for example?

I’m not talking about long discussion threads, but rather things like the Cooking subforum. There are incredible recipes there, and I’d love to save some of them directly to my hard drive. I assume heavy threads like that would just crush an already lightning-fast server anyway.🙄

Thanks 😁
loneraven25 loneraven25 Active Member
77 messages
joined Jul 2013
#2 ·
...you can actually just handle all of this right within your browser by simply right-clicking Save page as...
melloworca6 melloworca6 Regular
551 messages
joined May 2010
#3 ·
Well, the server finally bit the dust and went to heaven, so you might as well drop the link before I lose my mind. 😁

Honestly, this hits home for me too. Some of these threads are way too valuable to lose. Given how messy things have been with the server lately, I wouldn’t bet anything on being able to dig up specific info five years from now. Better to just grab a backup while we can. 🙂
Austin Baker86 Austin Baker86 Active MemberOP
56 messages
joined Feb 2009
#4 ·
loneraven25 said:...you can just handle that in the browser by right-clicking and selecting Save Page As...

Look, I get it. I've been online long enough to know I've done exactly that with certain sites before. But the end result? You just end up with a messy folder full of various components. Something like this:

image

And that doesn't work for me. I want a single, standalone file. Something portable, simple, and practical. Most importantly, if one file from that folder goes missing, the whole layout breaks—and since we're talking about recipes with a ton of images, losing them means the page is useless. If that happens, I might as well just copy-paste an archive version.

melloworca6 said:It's better to have a backup. 🙂

This 👍
loneraven25 loneraven25 Active Member
77 messages
joined Jul 2013
#5 ·
...my apologies if I wasn't clear enough before, but if you just open up Google Chrome and head over to the Tools / plugins menu
, you can go ahead and install the Save as PDF plugin
. Once that's all set up, you'll see an option right there in your navigation bar that lets you save any webpage directly as a PDF file...
steelskipper5 steelskipper5 Active Member
176 messages
joined Feb 2010
#6 ·
loneraven25 said:...my bad for leaving out a detail there—if you're using Google Chrome, just click on Tools / plugins
install the Save as PDF plugin
and then you'll have the option to save the page as a PDF file right from your navigation bar...

You can also save a page as an .mht file, which is basically a handy little HTML archive that works in any browser. I guess you might need an extension for that too, though—I don't know off the top of my head.
Austin Baker86 Austin Baker86 Active MemberOP
56 messages
joined Feb 2009
#7 ·
loneraven25 said:...my apologies for the incomplete info; in Google Chrome, just click on Tools / Plugins
install the Save as PDF plugin
and you'll have the option in your navigation bar to save the page as a PDF file...

That makes sense.

Tried it.

However, that wasn't my intention. If a PDF generator were integrated directly into vBulletin, we might avoid ads entirely (🙄, they drive me crazy when I'm using Chrome with everything blocked out, but once I generate a PDF, I'm hit with absolute garbage like some bottom-tier spam site) and the post formatting would be more intelligent. The posts themselves are the issue; they vary in length, so there needs to be better pagination/breaking.

steelskipper5 said:There's also the option to save a page in .mht format, which is a nice HTML archive readable by all browsers. Though you might need an extension for that too, I can't recall offhand.

I used MHT about ten years ago. If I recall correctly—feel free to correct me—it also came with a separate folder. I am looking for a single, standalone file.
Nicholas King Nicholas King Regular
716 messages
joined Jan 2023
#8 ·
steelskipper5 said:There is also the option of saving a page as an .mht file...

Aren't all of those just ways to save a single webpage—which, honestly, isn't exactly the most practical approach when we're dealing with a thread that spans dozens of pages?
steelskipper5 steelskipper5 Active Member
176 messages
joined Feb 2010
#9 ·
Quote : steelskipper5
Melissa Castillo said:I used to use Internet Explorer back in the day—like, ten years ago. If I recall correctly—and feel free to set me straight if I'm wrong—it used to track everything via a specific folder. What I’m actually looking for here is just one single, standalone file.

As far as I know, there isn't some extra folder tucked away somewhere. Everything is just shoved into one single archive—which, honestly, is kind of the whole point.
Quote : steelskipper5
Nicholas King said:Aren't those all just different ways to save? one Dozens of pages... honestly, that’s just not the most practical way to handle a thread, is it? Not when a topic stretches out this long—it's kind of a mess.

If you’ve got a massive thread that stretches out over dozens of pages, just open it up in Google Chrome with the AutoPager plugin installed. Let AutoPager load the entire topic—or, if things start getting buggy because the thread is just too huge, you can always just manually trigger it ten pages at a time. Once everything is loaded, just save the whole thing as an .mht file. Easy enough.

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