Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Originally Posted By: Yahoo Important Announcement After careful consideration, Yahoo! has decided to close GeoCities later this year. You can continue enjoying your GeoCities service until then — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible. We'll share more details this summer. For now, please visit the help center for more information. (via Slashdot) I believe there are many, many little dusty Blades fan sites that still remain on Geocities, and most of them have been abandoned. Isn't part of Saunders' Canal story still on Khoth's site? Then there's Motrax' - not SMoE's - graphics archive including some old midi tunes. The list goes on. In the interest of preserving hard-to-find BoE scenarios and ancient graphics archives before they vanish altogether, I would suggest a Pied Piper-like effort to list these sites and back them up with wget. If possible, a central archive would be nice - I think scenarios and graphics are Blades derivatives that cannot be copyrighted, but I don't know about the design and page content. Also, if you own an old Geocities site yourself, this is probably the point where you want to log back in and download its contents to your drive - and if you still use one, perhaps look at another free host (I'd suggest Freewebs, but I don't know if they still host uploaded HTML files like they did in 2004). ----------------------Geocities sites that need archiving I'll update the list in this post. Alphabetically by username for sites that can be archived using only the www.geocities.com/$user URL. - bihrno - blyceum - em770 - frahhamn - gaiuscatullus - jonahzahndi - skyle_jc - solberg85 - talonsa - terrorsmartyr - tracihedlund - zeviz1 Others, and additional pages not linked to from the root page (this will get a lot more complex than it seemed at first): - Rosycat: http://www.geocities.com/dead_penned/blades.html - Arancaytar: http://www.geocities.com/arancaytar/frameset.html - Luz: http://es.geocities.com/falcata2/ - Olly: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/3134/ - HYZ: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Bunker/8684/, - Paul: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Chasm/1581/ - SNL: http://www.geocities.com/dallen22c/secretninjalair/ - Lazarus: http://www.geocities.com/lazarus989/myscenarios.html - Zeviz GF Editor: http://www.geocities.com/zeviz1/geneforge_editor.html - Zeviz Nethergate: http://www.geocities.com/zeviz1/nethergate/ - Zeviz Subterra: http://www.geocities.com/zeviz1/SubTerra/ - Caligula: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Cauldron/2000/boe.html (SEE ALSO gaiuscatullus - he's got his own account) - Caligula: http://www.geocities.com/gaiuscatullus/spqr.html - Caligula: http://www.geocities.com/gaiuscatullus/scenpro.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast *i Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 First, as much as I complained about GeoCities, it is kind of sad to see this relic go. Yes, we should definitely try to pool resources and save as much data as possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast keira Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 I'd be happy to host anybody's site. I'm only using, like, 2% of my disc usage, so it wouldn't be a problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrulous Glaahk lampshade Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Sites that must be saved: http://www.geocities.com/blyceum/DForum/index.html http://www.geocities.com/tracihedlund/PixleProfusion/Pixle_Profusion.html http://www.keeperofni.150m.com/ I'll update this later Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk nikki. Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 http://es.geocities.com/falcata2/blazingblade.html And that one, which is probably the most important. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Balladeer Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 /action Runs off to look at her *comprehensive list* for more sites. Olly's Exile Pages. TMU. Zeviz's A2 Guide A Simple BoE Page - by Skyle The Abyss by E-Master Frahhams Grove HYZ's BoE Page The Lyceum Not the forums - Al's web pages Paul's BoE Page The Realm of Bain-Ihrno Rosycat's BoE Pages Secret Ninja Lair Smuggler's Alliance Solberg's Tower which is history we may or may not want to keep. TrueSite for Blades and PixPro which I will be taking care of so no worries. Lazarus' BoA Pages Zeviz's Nethergate Guide Zeviz's Geneforge Character Editor The Crystal Mine Caligula's BoE Page The Asylum - by Jonah Zahndi The Blazing Blade Phew... That's a lot. I only listed sites that started with www.geocities.com so if anyone has a geocities with a different domain name I didn't pick it out. @ Aran: Mortrax's Lair is on tripod.com. Are they an offshoot of geocities? And this is the only site I have for Khoth. Does he have another? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Originally Posted By: lampshade ...http://www.geocities.com/blyceum/DForum/index.html ... YES, though I think backing up the entire Lyceum would be a good idea:http://www.geocities.com/blyceum/ (EDIT: Stealth-sniped by Jewels.) I'd offer to host sites, but seeing that Aran's already offered... :-P Still, if you need someone who knows how to use wget, let me know. People, PLEASE don't kill yourselves by manually downloading every file on a GeoCities site, unless you happen to be the owner. There are automated ways of doing this sort of thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Balladeer Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Originally Posted By: Dintiradan Still, if you need someone who knows how to use wget, let me know. People, PLEASE don't kill yourselves by manually downloading every file on a GeoCities site, unless you happen to be the owner. There are automated ways of doing this sort of thing. Even the owners don't want to kill themselves manually downloading every file but I think I have FTP access if I can just get the program running again. I'm more interested in an automatic link changer for my pages. There's gotta be something fancy for edits like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 GREP TO THE RESCUE! batch grep, specifically. TextWrangler is an easy solution for this, on macs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk nikki. Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Quote: ...http://www.geocities.com/blyceum/DForum/index.html ... Huh, I did not know about this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Originally Posted By: Arancaytrus In the interest of preserving hard-to-find BoE scenarios and ancient graphics archives before they vanish altogether, I would suggest a Pied Piper-like effort to list these sites and back them up with wget. If possible, a central archive would be nice - I think scenarios and graphics are Blades derivatives that cannot be copyrighted, but I don't know about the design and page content. If any are forgotten, wouldn't they still be around on archive.org? Even if that's the case, though, this is a good idea – archive.org isn't perfect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 24, 2009 Author Share Posted April 24, 2009 To aid the effort, I will make a small archiving script that can copy an entire user's visible (ie. link-connected) site. wget, the obvious choice, will need some specific options to deal with Geocities idiosycracies: 1.) All Geocities sites share the same domain, so wget will need to filter by sub-directory to avoid downloading all of Geocities via the six-links phenomenon. 2.) Geocities prohibits external hot-linking of images, so wget will need to send the correct Referrer URL when downloading each image. 3.) Geocities serves ad-frames, which we should try to avoid downloading. I will probably use a shell-script calling wget (possibly with some PHP/Perl thrown in). --------------- Meanwhile, I strongly urge everyone who owns a Geocities site to enter their file manager and download the stuff that isn't linked from the front page, perhaps in an unlisted directory. Likewise, it's best to email the other site owners and tell them the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Khoth Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Originally Posted By: The Ghost of Jewels And this is the only site I have for Khoth. Does he have another? I used to, in the mists of time. It's gone now, and it wasn't Geocities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 24, 2009 Author Share Posted April 24, 2009 Originally Posted By: lampshade Sites that must be saved:http://www.geocities.com/blyceum/DForum/index.htmlhttp://www.geocities.com/tracihedlund/PixleProfusion/Pixle_Profusion.htmlhttp://www.keeperofni.150m.com/ I'll update this later Two out of three. Guess which one doesn't need saving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall BainIhrno Posted April 24, 2009 Share Posted April 24, 2009 Well, looks like I'll have to move my site, then.. I hope I can Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 24, 2009 Author Share Posted April 24, 2009 I copied Jewel's link list into a URL list in the first post, in preparation of the wget stuff. Here's some stuff I found out: Luz makes our job easy - the "blazingblade.html" can be removed from the URL to see the entire directory listing, ensuring we get it all. Be on the lookout for this on other sites specifying a HTML file (Rosycat's doesn't work as she has a blank index.html). If you aren't actively using your site anymore, likewise consider renaming your "index.html" to something else for the same effect. Directory listings are always archived fully; on sites cloaked by index.html we must rely on internal links (which Zeviz and Caligula show to be awfully unreliable). Note that some, like Luz's are on localized sub-domains (eg. es.geocities.com) and not available via www. Also, TimesSquare seems to be a network of unlisted multiple sites, enterable only with a word and four-digit code for each. I have no idea why they wanted to make life difficult, but there we go. Originally Posted By: Dintiradan I'd offer to host sites, but seeing that Aran's already offered... :-P I'm hosting you, right? ...OH ARGH. All this reminds me that TM asked me for webspace like months ago, and I completely forgot about following up. I'll do that immediately, so he can move his site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast VCH Posted April 25, 2009 Share Posted April 25, 2009 good site for website design etc. squarespace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 28, 2009 Author Share Posted April 28, 2009 Slashdot reports on a global archiving effort. We would be best off making sure ourselves, as some sites can only be accessed with specific knowledge of URLs (such as on TimesSquare pages), but this might save some work: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1961 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgeoning Battle Gamma Paroxysm Posted April 29, 2009 Share Posted April 29, 2009 Some might find this helpful. DreamHost is offering two years of free service and a domain to all existing GeoCities users. Might take some pressure off Aran. http://blog.dreamhost.com/2009/04/24/theyre-internet-history/ Oh, and I <3 the Alpha Centauri quote in your sig. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 29, 2009 Author Share Posted April 29, 2009 Originally Posted By: DreamHost WebRing was a free service for people with related sites to automatically trade links, written by co-founder Sage (it’s not just me and Dallas around here!) back in 1994, while he was still in high school! Now that's something I didn't know. The BoE webring is still around, though it's less of a ring and more of a list of dead links these days. It's how I first found Saunders' canal story, I now recall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted April 29, 2009 Share Posted April 29, 2009 Is it on Archive.org? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 29, 2009 Author Share Posted April 29, 2009 Yes it is. Or as much as I've ever seen of it. Edit: Linked to 2004 instead of 2002, since the old index only listed 5 files (though you could click "Next" to get to the rest). Edit: And another date change, since two more files were added later in 2004. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted April 29, 2009 Share Posted April 29, 2009 You have to be careful since sometimes they lose images. Also I've had them report that they can't find some pages on old sites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 29, 2009 Author Share Posted April 29, 2009 Just to be safe, I have grabbed a copy of the canal story and cleaned up the formatting a bit. It contains all the ten files (and 47 parts) there were on Edwin's site, and if it is okay with Saunders, I can upload a zip file somewhere. Edit: Turns out that two more files, one part each, were added in 2004 which I'd missed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Zeviz Posted April 29, 2009 Share Posted April 29, 2009 Originally Posted By: Arancaytrus ... on sites cloaked by index.html we must rely on internal links (which Zeviz and Caligula show to be awfully unreliable). ... Which links on my pages are broken? I had a couple backups originally, but that was several hard drives ago, so I am not sure if I still have files from my pages. So if you downloaded them, could you send me a copy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 30, 2009 Author Share Posted April 30, 2009 Links on your site aren't broken, per se. But you appear to have three different game sites which do not link to each other - requiring an archiver to enter each URL separately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Toby-Linn Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 I don't know whether this applies to anyone here or not, but WebRing offers free webspace to all it's members. You get at least 50 mb (more if you subscribe). http://www.webring.com/h/webspace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted April 30, 2009 Author Share Posted April 30, 2009 ...okay, I know DreamHost called them web 2.0, but why do they have a design with less aesthetic value than a parked domain page? To build a "retro" atmosphere? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 The promotional offer at the bottom of Aran's linked page is awesome for any GeoCities user, by the way. Though I don't see what's stopping people from stealing the deal from users who take too much time between updating their GeoCities site and applying for a DreamHost account. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Just send the link first, and update the site moments later. Or make sure there are no links to the special page. Then no-one can find it without knowing the exact link. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Zeviz Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Originally Posted By: Arancaytrus Links on your site aren't broken, per se. But you appear to have three different game sites which do not link to each other - requiring an archiver to enter each URL separately. They should be linking to each other from the links section, so if your automatic downloader follows all links to things under the same account, it should pick them up. (And if they don't, I'll fix it when I find a new host.) Thanks for mentioning dreamhost offer. Not sure if I want to pay for hosting of things related to games I haven't played in a while, but I guess I'll have 2 years to decide if I take the offer now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Balladeer Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Hey Aran, How complicated is it to make a program that looks at all the .html files in a specified group of folders and changes every instance of http://www.geocities.com/tracihedlund/ to http://www.truesite4blades.com/Home/ ? Or is there a program you already use for stuff like this or am I better off just going into each file myself and using find and replace? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 (Preemptively snipes Aran.) What you're looking for is sed (man page / Wikipedia). If you're a OS X user, it should already be on your machine. If you're a Windows user, you can download a port from here. Offhand, I don't know how exactly to run sed to get what you want - I'd have to go home and experiment myself first. Others will be able to tell you right away. At any rate, don't bother changing your files by hand, as you'll be able to do so in one fell swoop. EDIT: To clarify, the problem is finding a way to run sed recursively. Also, I think Jewels would rather replace the files 'in place', rather than having a separate output file (though of course you could run something afterwards that recursively deletes the originals and renames the new files). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Niemand Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 the basic command will like: Code: sed "s|http://www.geocities.com/tracihedlund/|http://www.truesite4blades.com/Home/|g" < path_to_input_file > path_to_output_file I think with find and xargs we can make it recursively be applied to all files of a given type in a directory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Zeviz Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 On Linux, and I guess OS X, you can go into directory that contains your files and run the following command: sed 's#www.geocities.com/zeviz1/#newhost.com/zeviz/#g' -i * More generally, the syntaxis is: sed 's#String to replace#New string#g' -i Filename EDIT: Crossposted with Niemand, but mine also includes -i flag that allows input and output files to be the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 What Zeviz and Niemand is suggesting would probably be quicker, but I don't think it'd be that hard to simply open all the files and go "Find - Replace All - Close - Fine - Replace All - Close - ..." ... would it? Of course, I haven't a clue how many files you have, so maybe it would be less than ideal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Niemand Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Okay, here's a one liner solution that seems to work: Code: find path_to_input_directory -type f -name '*.html' -print0 | xargs -n 1 -t -0 sed -i '' "s|http://www.geocities.com/tracihedlund/|http://www.truesite4blades.com/Home/|g" Enter this all on one line, replacing path_to_input_directory with the actually path to the directory, and it will pick out all files with an extension of 'html' and do the replacement in all of them. You might want to do this on a copy of the data, or replace the Code: -i '' with Code: -i 'bak' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Balladeer Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 I have... *counts* 491 pages that need to be updated. So, yeah, shortcuts wanted. I'm on Windows XP and looked at the sed port linked to but got a 403 error. Found a different download for a GNUwin but the program won't run for me. It opens up that black dos box then closes it down again... *le sigh* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Originally Posted By: Trottoisie GREP TO THE RESCUE! batch grep, specifically. Look for a Windows text editor with batch find and grep functionality. I'm sure one exists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast keira Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Originally Posted By: Trottoisie Originally Posted By: Trottoisie GREP TO THE RESCUE! batch grep, specifically. Look for a Windows text editor with batch find and grep functionality. I'm sure one exists. Notepad++. It has grep stuff (I believe), but you can also: Use the replace feature, fill it in, but make sure to select the thingy that says 'replace in all open files' or something like that. Works very well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Oh wait, I think my text editor also has that feature... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted May 1, 2009 Author Share Posted May 1, 2009 Originally Posted By: Niemand the basic command will like: Code: sed "s|http://www.geocities.com/tracihedlund/|http://www.truesite4blades.com/Home/|g" < path_to_input_file > path_to_output_file I think with find and xargs we can make it recursively be applied to all files of a given type in a directory. Huh, you can use sed for that? I do find-and-replace with "perl -pi -e 's/old/new/g'" pretty much exclusively. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted May 1, 2009 Share Posted May 1, 2009 "Replace in all open files" is definitely not the same thing as batch find, and in Jewels' case the quantity of files involved makes opening them all impractical to say the least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Niemand Posted May 1, 2009 Share Posted May 1, 2009 Sigh. Windows. I forgot about that. Given that to use my method, jewels would need to install sed, xargs, find, and bash (or at least some real unix shell), she's probably better off finding some GUI program to do it, and then throwing it away when she's done. (In my defense any properly configured computer comes with these sort of tools, and I had planned to exploit that. ) At any rate it looks at a glance like Actual Search & Replace, Windows Grep, or Multiple Find and Replace would get the job done tolerably. @Aran: You know the second command I posted is by far the more interesting; the one you quoted is basically the archetypal use of sed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgeoning Battle Gamma Paroxysm Posted May 1, 2009 Share Posted May 1, 2009 Originally Posted By: Arancaytrus ...okay, I know DreamHost called them web 2.0, but why do they have a design with less aesthetic value than a parked domain page? To build a "retro" atmosphere? That's not their doing. They sold it to Yahoo! then someone bought it from them and 'retro-fied' it. They're just mocking the way their brainchild got pimped out. Jewels, is there any way you could trim it down to a more manageable number? This is an excellent opportunity for spring cleaning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast keira Posted May 1, 2009 Share Posted May 1, 2009 If I may offer the suggestion of moving to a Drupal CMS? Any decent webhost should have PHP and MySQL available, and the only really hard part would be moving all the content, but I'm sure someone could make a script for that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Balladeer Posted May 1, 2009 Share Posted May 1, 2009 Originally Posted By: Paroxysm Jewels, is there any way you could trim it down to a more manageable number? This is an excellent opportunity for spring cleaning. No way, if anything I'll be expanding in the wake of being forced to do something with it. I haven't updated my home page in way too long. Unless I completely scrap the way I have the website set up and condense it like Kelandon's Archive, but I like how every scenario has it's own page... that's over 300 of them right there. Besides, trimming would require more work. All I have to do is get the pages run through a batch replace thingie and it'll be practically the same, only with a cooler name. I checked on the graphics database, too. It's 2.50 more per month to use their mysql. If I were catering to a larger group of people I probably wouldn't hesitate, but with the few BoE designers we have left I think browsing will have to do. And Huzzah!! The deed is done! http://www.truesite4blades.com/Home/ is now the official url for TrueSite for Blades. Now... just to update that front page. *digs out dreamweaver* --- Stupid 'convenient' automatic website making program... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Aran Posted May 1, 2009 Author Share Posted May 1, 2009 Originally Posted By: w-dueck If I may offer the suggestion of moving to a Drupal CMS? Any decent webhost should have PHP and MySQL available, and the only really hard part would be moving all the content, but I'm sure someone could make a script for that... Edit: Sorry, I was interpreting that as a suggestion for moving all affected Geocities sites, not for Jewels to move her site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Balladeer Posted May 5, 2009 Share Posted May 5, 2009 http://www.geocities.com/pomo_stud/ Jeremy probably has it covered, but I add it to the list nonetheless. edit: And you can probably take me off the list since the need for archiving has been taken care of. According to Windows Grep, I have 57 pages left with geocities links that will expire. Over half of them are to TMU. Are there any progress reports for any of the archiving? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Niemand Posted May 5, 2009 Share Posted May 5, 2009 For TMU at least, we should badger TM to move his site to higher ground. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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