Can I archive a forum?

[xilin]

Does anyone know how to backup/archive/mirror a forum?  

[Franklin <Nabble>]

What info would you expect to see in the archive?  We currently don't reveal user's email addresses to other users, so this may be an issue.  We could provide some kind of XML download with all the data, but let us know what exactly you would expect.

[xilin]

Last night's down time was a shock. So I'd like to backup the posts and replies of the entire forum (no emails) to my hard disk just in case something happens in the future, at least I can recover the contents.

[Franklin <Nabble>]

You can use our Atom feed to get post data.  Normally it is:

http://n2.nabble.com/xilin-chinese-school-f3010347.xml

But I added an undocumented option to change the number of posts in the feed.  So to change it to 1000 posts, you could do:

http://n2.nabble.com/xilin-chinese-school-f3010347n1000.xml

This isn't released yet.  I will post again here after the next release.

[xilin]

These seem to be the same as the "New messages" and "New threads" options at the bottom of the forum?  Which one gives me the complete topics with replies?  Given the number of threads and messages, it is hard for me to tell from the generated .xlm files.  Thanks for your help in advance.

[xilin]

Help! I accidentally selected "subscribe" from the top of the feed (.xlm), now every time I select feed/new threads or new messages, I am redirected to my yahoo's front page tab.  How can I go back to the original way so I can archive my forum's topics and replies?

[Franklin <Nabble>]

xilin wrote

These seem to be the same as the "New messages" and "New threads" options at the bottom of the forum?  Which one gives me the complete topics with replies?

"New messages"

I also added an 'in-reply-to' tag from the Atom Threading Extensions for the next release so you can reconstruct threads.

[Franklin <Nabble>]

Sorry but this has something to do with your browser and nothing to do with Nabble.  I don't know how this works.

[Graham Perrin]

Franklin Schmidt <Nabble> wrote

I also added an 'in-reply-to' tag from the Atom Threading Extensions for the next release so you can reconstruct threads.

… and that's another gold star, or red flag. It's things like this that make us love Nabble. Thanks.

[xilin]

The 2nd link: http://n2.nabble.com/xilin-chinese-school-f3010347n1000.xml
gives me threads + messages of the last couple of days.  Is there an option to get all threads/messages for the entire forum? Thanks!!

[Franklin <Nabble>]

As I said, this should work after the next release.  The next release is expected by the end of next week.

[xilin]

Thank you!

[Claude]

Mr. Schmidt

Will the change(s) you spek of for next week -
Change all forUMs - on only where the "owner" makes a change?

Thanks...

[Franklin <Nabble>]

all forums

[Franklin <Nabble>]

Sorry for the delay but this should work now.

[Jonathan Holt]

This thread has left me quite impressed with your helpfulness. A user asked about a feature and you just *DID* it.  It might have taken you a little while, but it was still phenomenally fast compared to any corporate support I've had the unfortunate opportunity to experience. I ran a rather popular community in the past and was quite devastated by our hosting company simply disappearing, with no backups and no valid contact info. Naturally, support for backing up the data was the first thing I looked into when I signed up here. I read the TOS and was discouraged to find "You may not use software programs to extract data from Nabble or use any automated means of using Nabble or extracting information from Nabble."  This seemed to me to indicate that backups were *not* permitted. Just before this it mentions that "Except for your own content, you may not copy or republish Nabble's collection of posts or any portion of the collection."  It was my impression that all posts are the property of the poster, not the message board admin, and therefore I would not be permitted to download my other users's posts, just my own.  From the context surrounding these statements in the TOS I can see that it was not the intent to prevent performing backups, but it seems to me to not be worded as clearly as it could. Is there perhaps a way to make it so that someone registering at my board would have to agree to my own TOS just for my board that would explicitly grant me the right to backup, store, and republish any posts made on the board at my own personal discression?

Thank you for any help you can provide.

[Franklin <Nabble>]

This language in the TOS has been removed for the next release.  We will have a better backup solution in a month or two.

[Jonathan Holt]

I love you guys! :)

[Jim Comeau]

Is there a procedure yet for this?

-- I guess that's not very clear. Apparently, this thread has the answer, but I'm not clear on exactly what to do to get a full backup. Am I supposed to use a feedreader?

[Hugo <Nabble>]

We are still working on a better backup solution and this will probably take 1 or 2 months. For now, all we can offer is the forum feeds. Soon users will be able to download a zip archive with the forum contents.