Are the MinMax Boards/Brilliant Gameologist website down for anyone else?

[Zephonim]

luckily I happend to have the tab open so I copied it all into a google docs, here it is

How can i copy this to my google docs?

I don't see a button.


I copied the ultimate list of Save or Be Screwed and am copying over the Archivist Handbook atm. I'll see if i can get the shadowcraft mage handbook too.

[Stratovarius]

I have Megs facebook if you need to contact her

Also I have tons of stuff there not backed up that I intended to post here that I could use help on!

Bhu, if you could reach out to Prime (he's the tech person for our end) - easiest way is IRC at #mmxgeneral on irc.Rizon.net.

Do you think this calls for another thread index? And, do you, Meg, or Prime have a timeframe on how long we have until the old sites are gone?

Yes, another thread index would help immensely for backing up material. For the moment, mirror here. There is a new forum where we intended to put the MMX data, but for the moment I would recommend using GitP over it. There's a decision to be made about whether it's even worth attempting to resurrect the MMX community without any of the forum information.

As for timeline, uncertain - the little we know is that the hosting service for BG/MMX has suspended the account. Whether they give a month, a quarter, or longer to resume paying is entirely unknown. Bluntly, grab everything ASAP, MMX may be dead.

Areas to focus on (imo): Handbooks and Homebrew. There's a lot of good content over there (SirP, Bhu, etc.) as well as handbooks that have migrated from 309 to BG to MMX.

[TheFederalist]

How can i copy this to my google docs?

I don't see a button.


I copied the ultimate list of Save or Be Screwed and am copying over the Archivist Handbook atm. I'll see if i can get the shadowcraft mage handbook too.

Right click the page, there should be a save-as button. That should make it a file on your computer, from there you can probably just upload it to Drive. That's the easiest way that I could think of.

[Stratovarius]

I should note there is still an MMX irc channel (#mmxgeneral @ Rizon.net) and a MMX Discord, although neither is that populated.

[prototype00]

Is there any possibility of paying for a grace period to get all the files back up for rescue (just in case Wayback fails us) or is the outlay for that too much?

[danielxcutter]

Is there any possibility of paying for a grace period to get all the files back up for rescue (just in case Wayback fails us) or is the outlay for that too much?

Yeah, if nothing else, we really need those handbooks. And I don't want to force people to give up all the homebrew that they spent countless hours making, either.

Too bad I'm sorta broke, though.

[Bhu]

Bhu, if you could reach out to Prime (he's the tech person for our end) - easiest way is IRC at #mmxgeneral on irc.Rizon.net.



Yes, another thread index would help immensely for backing up material. For the moment, mirror here. There is a new forum where we intended to put the MMX data, but for the moment I would recommend using GitP over it. There's a decision to be made about whether it's even worth attempting to resurrect the MMX community without any of the forum information.

As for timeline, uncertain - the little we know is that the hosting service for BG/MMX has suspended the account. Whether they give a month, a quarter, or longer to resume paying is entirely unknown. Bluntly, grab everything ASAP, MMX may be dead.

Areas to focus on (imo): Handbooks and Homebrew. There's a lot of good content over there (SirP, Bhu, etc.) as well as handbooks that have migrated from 309 to BG to MMX.

Prime is on gitp too.

Also I have no idea how rizon works as I have never been there

[Stratovarius]

Is there any possibility of paying for a grace period to get all the files back up for rescue (just in case Wayback fails us) or is the outlay for that too much?

It's more that we don't have access to the hosting account, and thus don't even know what to pay for. And BlueHost certainly wouldn't allow a transfer just by calling up and asking, even money in hand.

[GilesTheCleric]

I have created a unified thread so that we can keep our archiving efforts organised.

[Zephonim]

This is the greatest catastrophe we have ever faced

[Stratovarius]

***UPDATE****

The MMX forums should be back online shortly. This is a temporary reprieve. It's $14.99 a month to pay for hosting, and BlueHost is "kind" enough to allow outsiders to pay. HOWEVER: This does not solve the reasons that the forum was being transferred in the first place. The most critical of these are that the forum software is out of date and has known malware in the wild, and that because email verification is down, new users cannot sign up.

Prime32 and I can get a new forum up and running at MinMaxForum.com in short order (it's not there yet, don't go looking), but the data copy across would have to be entirely manual. We do not have access to the back end of MMX, nor will we unless the BGs grant it to us. Therefore, manual copying is the way forward, regardless of where it ends up.

Thoughts?

[danielxcutter]

***UPDATE****

The MMX forums should be back online shortly. This is a temporary reprieve. It's $14.99 a month to pay for hosting, and BlueHost is "kind" enough to allow outsiders to pay. HOWEVER: This does not solve the reasons that the forum was being transferred in the first place. The most critical of these are that the forum software is out of date and has known malware in the wild, and that because email verification is down, new users cannot sign up.

Prime32 and I can get a new forum up and running at MinMaxForum.com in short order (it's not there yet, don't go looking), but the data copy across would have to be entirely manual. We do not have access to the back end of MMX, nor will we unless the BGs grant it to us. Therefore, manual copying is the way forward, regardless of where it ends up.

Thoughts?

Well, if we have to, then it's better than nothing...

Also, your avatar doesn't show up on my end.

[Melblen_Cairn]

A new forum would be great. I have a lot of material on my PbP's that wouldn't be too hard to re-post via copying over having to re-create a lot of it. Thanks for your work looking into getting us back up and running quickly Strat.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Is it down now?

Tried to log in a few weeks ago but forgot my password, submitted a "forgot password?", never got anything, tried again 2 days later, and 2 weeks later still nothing. Pretty much have resigned myself to never accessing my account again.

[GilesTheCleric]

Is it down now?

Tried to log in a few weeks ago but forgot my password, submitted a "forgot password?", never got anything, tried again 2 days later, and 2 weeks later still nothing. Pretty much have resigned myself to never accessing my account again.

The payment for a reprieve month of service doesn't seem to have gone through as of this post, so currently yes.

Do you have the URLs for any resources you've created over there?

[Stratovarius]

Not so good news - old MMX/BG appears to have been taken down for non-payment related reasons. Otherwise it should have been back up already.

Better news - MinMaxForum.com is up and running and can host threads. Prime is currently working to copy the look/feel, etc. from our test forum.

[Kuroimaken]

This is awful. I remember back when we had to move the first time around from the BG boards...

I know it's not much guys, but let me know if there's something I can do to help.

[lbuttitta]

Fortunately, the Google caches are still working, so we can still get to the handbooks (thank goodness!).

[Stratovarius]

Anyone who was having trouble logging into MinMaxForum.com shouldn't have any issues any longer. Had to fix an outdated part of the theme.

Edit: For those who are grabbing threads, we've found some that don't exist on Google or Wayback, but do exist in Bing. Make sure to check other search engines as well when trying to grab threads.

[GilesTheCleric]

This is awful. I remember back when we had to move the first time around from the BG boards...

I know it's not much guys, but let me know if there's something I can do to help.

We have a thread dedicated to a mirroring/ archiving effort.

[Kuroimaken]

Anyone who was having trouble logging into MinMaxForum.com shouldn't have any issues any longer. Had to fix an outdated part of the theme.

Edit: For those who are grabbing threads, we've found some that don't exist on Google or Wayback, but do exist in Bing. Make sure to check other search engines as well when trying to grab threads.

I still can't login. It says my username doesn't exist. That's just preposterous, dagnabbit.

[GilesTheCleric]

I still can't login. It says my username doesn't exist. That's just preposterous, dagnabbit.

You'll need to create a new account. I don't believe the old accounts can be transferred.

[Stratovarius]

You'll need to create a new account. I don't believe the old accounts can be transferred.

We have no data from the old forum, aside from what is being saved. So, save away and we'll see what happens going forward.

[martixy]

Terrible news indeed.

I can't devote much time this month to scouring archives sadly. (I guess I could help with technical stuff, though from what I read of the original migration thread there seemed to be no shortage of competent folk.)

[ksbsnowowl]

Better news - MinMaxForum.com is up and running and can host threads. Prime is currently working to copy the look/feel, etc. from our test forum.

I saved my Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal, along with boards code, in anticipation of the big switch. It seems it was an excellent thing I did.

However, the new forum doesn't seem to have a Campaign Journals section. I'll wait to repost it until there is an appropriate section for it.

[Stratovarius]

I saved my Sunless Citadel Adventure Path - Campaign Journal, along with boards code, in anticipation of the big switch. It seems it was an excellent thing I did.

However, the new forum doesn't seem to have a Campaign Journals section. I'll wait to repost it until there is an appropriate section for it.

I wouldn't worry too much about that - we can add boards very quickly as long as a user asks. That's how we ended up with the PbP and Homebrew forums. I'll go ahead the campaign journals.

Right now, Prime is feverishly testing a lot of improvements over the old forums, including ones for PbP gameplay, better tables, etc. We should be able to see those in a day or two, hopefully.

[LoyalPaladin]

And all the sweet handbooks were over there :/

It's the handbooks that worries me. I pray that our GitP will be the immortal forum.

[GilesTheCleric]

It's the handbooks that worries me. I pray that our GitP will be the immortal forum.

The internet archive or perhaps google is the best bet for lasting information on the internet in the absence of a funded DOI system. Could we move everything over to those two places? Yes, but that would also make it difficult for folks to browse or comment. There's not really any one perfect solution. For now, copying the data across multiple forums for redundancy is probably best.

Edit: theoretically if a scholar were to take up documenting these sorts of things as the subject of their research, we might have more reliable backups, such as this or other similar projects that I can't find a link to right away.

[TaiLiu]

HTTrack is probably the most reliant way to save a website as an outsider, since it saves the entire website - not just a single page, as Google Cache or Internet Archive does. Of course, it is of no use now, since the websites are down.

[Bhu]

Be sure to use Bing's cache too, it has stuff google misses.

BG Josh has stated it has something to do with there being too many files, and believes he can fix it. There is no certainty, so keep backing stuff up.