LTG: Under New Ownership

GGJaguar

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No prune. Here's the first post from 2005:
Preserving history and precious information, one post at a time. Thanks to you and the mods for all you do!!
 

GGJaguar

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You'd have to know the old URL.
Yes, the pre-LTG place was called The Guild Discussion Forum and the URL was http://guildpages.aimoo.com/. I was a member there prior to it being replaced by LTG. However, the posts from TGDF and LTG were not archived by the Wayback Machine. We can see some topics, but no discussion. So much info lost to time and cyberspace. :(
 

GAD

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Yes, the pre-LTG place was called The Guild Discussion Forum and the URL was http://guildpages.aimoo.com/. I was a member there prior to it being replaced by LTG. However, the posts from TGDF and LTG were not archived by the Wayback Machine. We can see some topics, but no discussion. So much info lost to time and cyberspace. :(
Dynamic pages (which is what all forums are) need an underlying database to function, so unless they saved the individual resulting page manually (which would probably crush the forum software and lead to sites blocking them) then I'd guess an entire forum is not saved unless requested by the site, but even then it's complicated.

Here's an example: https://web.archive.org/web/20130403113653/http://letstalkguild.com/phpBB2/index.php

That's the LTG forum as it appeared in 2013. The issue is that if you click on any of the forums, you get a dead link. Why? Because the forum link is actually a link to a script:

Code:
http://letstalkguild.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=2

The script (viewforum.php in the phpBB2 directory) then pulls the most recent posts for that forum (forum number 2), and that script isn't there, nor is the database that would be queried by that script.

Here's an example on our own current front page, if you look at the link for the Miscellaneous forum, it looks like this:

Code:
https://letstalkguild.com/ltg/index.php?forums/miscellaneous.130/

index.php is a script which is being passed data - in this case that data being "forums/miscellaneous.130". The script queries the database and loads the most recent posts for "miscellaneous.130", which is then rendered on your browser on the fly every time you click it.

Even the URL for this very thread shows this behavior:

Code:
https://letstalkguild.com/ltg/index.php?threads/ltg-under-new-ownership.201174

The same index.php script loads from the "threads" table, the one with the key value "201174" which has the name "ltg-under-new-ownership".

TL;DR - Every page is completely dynamic and therefore very difficult to archive from outside the site.

BTW if you've ever heard the term "Web 2.0", this is what it's referring to.
 
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JerryR

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Hi GAD. Only just come upon this thread. Didn't know you had replaced Don. When I started posting again after a bit of an absence I did notice the site was easier to use.
I was interested in the history, and that as LTG it only started in 2005. I was trying to remember when I joined. My icon doesn't say, and I'm sure it used to say "member since ....". I remember Coastie and West and many others were the main characters when I joined. I know I'd been a member for a couple of years when I made it to Arlington Texas for the 2009 get together so I'm guessing I joined in 2007.
Just to say, love this site😊
 
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