ATTN: The original Celtic Woman Forum is on its last legs

The original Celtic Woman Forum is dying. I'm thinking a hardware failure. Images hosted are NOT loading anymore.

If you value ANY of your information log in and download it before it's completely gone.

https://www.celticwomanforum.com/

If you know someone who was on there, tell them to do the same! The more we can save, the better!

That's sad. There's so much information there, especially from before 2015, that will be lost when that old forum dies. Unfortunately, The Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) isn't able to archive the content on there. It would basically have to be done page by page. It's impractical to archive it all without either a database backup or by using some sort a script that crawls through the forum and retrieves content.

As far as my stuff on there that was important to me, I pulled it all down manually years ago. But so many stories from the earlier years of Celtic Woman, some of which inspired me, will cease to exist.

Can anyone think or high priority content for us to go retrieve from the old forum while we still can?

I'm trying to find out if there is a way to archive it.

Sadly I'm very weak in coding-fu.

I'm hoping someone has a program already built to do it.

Here's where I'm pleading for something to use: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/17rviq3/how_to_preserve_a_forum_running_smf_1121/

I am a programmer, maybe I could try to make a bot to extract the data from those pages. Well, if anyone wants to join forces DM me, please.

I will need help to organize this in a cohesive way and then restore it somewhere.

The only problem with blindly copying the data off the old site is The CW forum use a shared database with THK's forum also so you would also get all the posts from their forum so really the only way would be to download post 1 by 1

I am a programmer, maybe I could try to make a bot to extract the data from those pages. Well, if anyone wants to join forces DM me, please.

I will need help to organize this in a cohesive way and then restore it somewhere.

Yes, that would be the approach.

I am a programmer, maybe I could try to make a bot to extract the data from those pages. Well, if anyone wants to join forces DM me, please.

I will need help to organize this in a cohesive way and then restore it somewhere.

Yes, that would be the approach.

Pulling some metadata from the posts could also be important (especially the date and timestamp, maybe the username). Fortunately, that metadata should be presented consistently within posts, so whatever is crawling through the forum could identify and extract it.

Forgive me if I seem dumb, but what is causing the hardware to fail? The fact that it’s outdated?

It's almost certainly hosted by a third party. The hardware of the hosting company is probably fine. However, the server software and likely its database have been neglected for years.

Did anyone have any luck backing up the old content? I don't imagine it would be easy as we'd likely hit the hosters caps and throttling limits at the very least.

I have talked with the hosting company it is a small company in Milw. Wi. But they wouldn't give me much info they were going to contact her and tell her I was trying to contact her but she never contacted me. These forums are not built to remove large amounts of old data. I hate to say when that forum dies all it's data will dei with it

Any idea how we can get people on here to join in on the CW contest based on this contest will tell if we get anymore form CW

Any idea how we can get people on here to join in on the CW contest based on this contest will tell if we get anymore form CW

Do you mean people who are already members here? Maybe they're simply not reading that thread, although I'm sure anyone would want free signed merch from anyone. I got a couple ideas.
1. Rename the thread to include the words "WIN" and "FREE". Click bait.
2. Can you send a special broadcast email to all users? I belong to another forum (different subject altogether), and they send broadcast emails every now & then if it's something special.

I gave the forum and contest another plug on social media. I don't have a ton of reach. Most people on Facebook just ignore my raving about Celtic Woman at this point, but it might get a few people interested.

I tried to post in the official Celtic Woman fan group on Facebook, but they haven't approved any of my posts yet. They must be sick of me too. 😂

I gave the forum and contest another plug on social media. I don't have a ton of reach. Most people on Facebook just ignore my raving about Celtic Woman at this point, but it might get a few people interested.

I tried to post in the official Celtic Woman fan group on Facebook, but they haven't approved any of my posts yet. They must be sick of me too. 😂

Are we talking about this one? Or the original?

If we are talking about the original, it's a lost cause. The administrator hasn't logged in since 2017 and they are not accepting new members.

I gave the forum and contest another plug on social media. I don't have a ton of reach. Most people on Facebook just ignore my raving about Celtic Woman at this point, but it might get a few people interested.

I tried to post in the official Celtic Woman fan group on Facebook, but they haven't approved any of my posts yet. They must be sick of me too. 😂

Are we talking about this one? Or the original?

If we are talking about the original, it's a lost cause. The administrator hasn't logged in since 2017 and they are not accepting new members.

Yes we are talking about the old Forum about tring to download the old data and Tom is talking about the New forum and the contest thats going on in the New Forum tring to get more members to play along with the contest because Celtic Woman is now working with the Forum and is sponsering these contests and the prizes aare real and will come right from CW in Ireland to the winners

To merge both separate discussions in this topic together gracefully, I posted about the contest on the old Forum:
https://www.celticwomanforum.com/index.php?topic=21979.0

There has been very little activity there recently. Perhaps a dozen posts in the past year. But there may be a few people that still visit that may come here and participate.