How do I distribute my Forum on CD-ROM for viewing

[wolter]

hi,

my forum is getting very large now, and the members asking for an offline-version for searching and reading. Is there a way (a "hack" or tool) to do this? does an offline-player exists?

thanks,

sascha.

[Steve Machol]

Unfortunately you can't do this. It would require giving out the complete vB software and would obviously be a violation of the license agreement.

A vB-reader is a neat idea though! If you'd like, I can transfer this to the Hack Requests forum. Maybe someone will want to work on this.

[wolter]

thanks for your reply. and yes, please move it to the hacks forum...

best,

sascha.

[Admin]

I don't think it would be hard to create a vB to HTML 'saver', that will save all threads / forums / pages in HTML format.
Just need to adjust some things...

Good luck anyway! :)

[rylin]

if you want to do it the easy way,
just download a site-ripper / offline-browsing tool, let it wander through the forum. When it's done, just remove anything <form> related..

[Neo]

compile the vb files into a program with a .exe extension and add a live update version to it from the DB and you have it. if you are going to ask me how to do it... dont think i know, and if i did i have way to many things to do;)

[wolter]

@okidoki: that is quite a good idea, but not as userfriendly as I wish (I have round about 11000 threads and 57000 posts in the moment ;) ). btw what is about a search-function...

please, there must somebody out there who has just finished a small application for viewing (and hopefully searching) a vBulletin-forum offline...

best,

sascha.

[Neo]

im telling you, that with all the posts/threads/forums you have it would take alot of downloading for that to happen. your best shot at user friendlyness and sanity would be to try and find someone that would either be able to make a application with DB connection and live update or a php app that can connect to the DB extract all the post/thread/forums some kind of folder or temps and then update every so often or when the user requires. but besides from that i can seem to think of any other way the would use a program.

[rylin]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by wolter
@okidoki: that is quite a good idea, but not as userfriendly as I wish (I have round about 11000 threads and 57000 posts in the moment ;) ). btw what is about a search-function...

please, there must somebody out there who has just finished a small application for viewing (and hopefully searching) a vBulletin-forum offline...

best,

sascha.

[Ruth]

if you have adobe acrobat, you can use the web capture feature, and put everything on one pdf file, which can be viewable in any O.S.

[marc_t]

This is a very interesting point.
Ruth, do you know if I have the possibility to set filters vor the download. I just have the option to choose the whole site or the site I typed the URL of.
If I choose to take the whole site, Acrobat takes all the links, including all members in the list etc...

Would be great to get more info about this ;)

marc

[Ruth]

you have the following options:

URL to download:

Levels: 1-2-3-...

O Get entire site

O Only get pages under the same path

O Stay on the same server.

cheers,

[marc_t]

Jap, that was what I already had.

The Problem is, if you get a vBulletin Board into pdf, it takes every link that is reachable from the levels you want to have.

E.g. if you want to have two levels of a Forum you also get the calendar, the user cp, the faq etc...
Furthermore you get all kinds of Forumsorting, as "by Date (increasing/decreasing)", "by user"....

You get what I want to explain?! ;)

[gmtalk]

just food for thought could you not use something similar to the hack for vbspider. it is in html format.

just an idea

[marc_t]

I had a try with webzip. So far this is not bad, as I can set filters for paths I don´t wanna have, but the search engine doesn´t work anymore afterwards.
Do you think there is a solution with working search function?

marc

[rylin]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by marc_t
I had a try with webzip. So far this is not bad, as I can set filters for paths I don?t wanna have, but the search engine doesn?t work anymore afterwards.
Do you think there is a solution with working search function?

marc

[marc_t]

so the only solution would be to produce an offline searchfunction which searches the sourcetext.. hmm

oki thanks for your help to all!

marc

[rylin]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by marc_t
so the only solution would be to produce an offline searchfunction which searches the sourcetext.. hmm

oki thanks for your help to all!

marc

[Admin]

marc_t, please enter your username here (http://www.vbulletin.com/members/forums.php) to show you're a licensed user of vBulletin. Thanks.

[pelicanparts]

I'm a master at creating programs that 'scrape' other people's sits (no comment), so I thought why not create a script that will 'scrape' the Vb, and convert it into static HTML?

If I do this each Sunday night (let's say), and then submit the first link to the big search engines, then it should generate some significant traffic eh?

If you want to search static HTML on the web, there are plenty of search engines out there that can then re-index your whole static HTML and provide you with search results.

As for the folks out there who don't like Static HTML - BooHA! Static HTML is the fastest thing out there - it takes miliseconds to dish out a static page, and a lot more overhead to pull a page out of MySQL (including a call to PHP). I wish that there was a Vb option to create Static HTML like they did with UBB 5 (the only thing you'd lose is "current time").

Anyways, I know nothing about PHP, but I am an expert at Perl, (or so I think), so I'll just write this little routine in Perl, and post it here in the next few days.

-Wayne

[pelicanparts]

Hey, this was easier than I thought. Check out the static version of my Vb:

http://www.pelicanbbs.com/ (it's still generating right now).

I thought that the server load would kill the machine, but it seems to be plugging away with almost no loss in performance. The Perl program I wrote is knocking thru each and every post and saving it on the hard drive. Also changing and updating the links in the referring pages...

-Wayne

[pelicanparts]

Here's a reply that I posted on VBulletin.com:

Yup, I'll release it as a hack - just doing some testing. Unforunately, it's written in Perl, and I think most people here are PHP experts. I'm a bit reluctant to throw it out there, because I don't want 1000s of people emailing me questions about it (I already get about 200 emails a day, not including the junk).

We archive our HTML site on CD-ROM, so this would be a good start. The trouble is, that the images are still hyperlinks and would need to be resolved locally (something I didn't do yet).

Also, for my site, the file sizes are 1.4GB. However, this is for a BBS with 41000 threads, and 265,000 posts...

Anyone know of a search-engine that can parse HTML data, but be run as an executable on CD-ROM? That would be the killer in 'killer-app' for this...

-Wayne

I would love to get a search engine that could work on a CD-ROM. It would basically have to be a stand-alone .exe (probably for windows, since that's what most people use) and be able to read from an index on the CD and find files on the CD. Very possible, is there something out there like that? Not high enough on my list to write it... :)

-Wayne

[aldamon]

My boss just asked for a static CD-ROM version of our bulletin board. Is this a possibility now?

[pelicanparts]

I have indeed written this, and it runs and archives the pages every Sunday night.

http://www.pelicanbbs.com/

However, it still has active links. I suppose that you could use this to create a CD-ROM archive, but I have a feeling that it would take a long time...

Hmmm....

-Wayne

[aldamon]

Our forums have 2257 posts. It is a low-traffic, professional board. Would this small quantity of posts be feasible with your software?

[pelicanparts]

Sure. I just haven't had time to repackage it as a hack. It's written in Perl too, which makes it a bit more complicated for those who don't know it...

-Wayne