Trying to save the information from herpcenter [Archive]

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murrindindi

05-13-20, 10:53 AM

I hope I`m not breaking the forum rules, I am trying to save 15 years worth of information gathered together from herpcenter.com which can cease to exist at any time, in which case all this info will be lost forever... At the moment the site is completely safe to visit, please ignore the warning note and continue...
https://www.herpcenter.com/reptile-forums/monitors.27/

chairman

05-13-20, 09:18 PM

I'm sure that I've visited the site in the past but I didn't recall it. I visited and read up on the issue. The short version for members here, the forum owner passed on, leaving the site in a weird limbo because there are no individuals authorized to access the server, etc, other than the original owner. The site continues to exist because the bills keep getting paid (for now).

Unfortunately, it won't be the first forum to disappear. At least one other forum that I used to be a member of disappeared. I'd suggest that the best way to save the knowledge, or at least the availability of the knowledge, would be to encourage members of that forum to join other forums, such as this one.

For the older material... I'm not sure what to tell you. From my experience with dealing with a hosting company/domain, there's something of an uphill battle for the site in terms of saving itself. Companies that provide those services are big on protecting data. As far as copying what already exists... there are obstacles there too.

Best of luck to you on getting that data backed up.

murrindindi

05-15-20, 11:38 AM

Hi Chairman, thanks for your reply, it looks as if the website will stop existing at some point, all the info gathered lost forever, nothing much we can do... Facebook rules these days rather than reptile forums, not sure that that`s a good thing from what I see on FB...

chairman

05-15-20, 06:33 PM

murrindindi

05-16-20, 05:51 AM

I'm not a fan of FB. It lacks organization, isn't searchable, content just disappears. Forums are genuinely useful resources.

I checked for herpcenter on archive.org. The site is backed up from 1999 to 2016. Perhaps someone could reach out to archive and ask for another scan.

I`m clueless when it comes to how these websites are run, can you explain in VERY simple terms what you mean by "ask for another scan"? The late owner`s brother in law was supposed to be taking over the running of the site but he doesn`t seem to be interested in continuing (a couple of staff members contacted him recently) so at the moment everything is up in the air, nobody knows what to do next if in fact anything can be done?

chairman

05-16-20, 05:03 PM

I have very limited experience with this kind of stuff.

Archive.org keeps snapshots of certain websites stored. If you go to the website and enter, say ssnakess.com into the search, it will show you that this forum was archived on November 2, 2019, by Alexa Crawl. (Herpcenter is also being archived by Alexa Crawl.) The link to this site in its archive format is: sSnakeSs.com (http://web.archive.org/web/20191102100122/http://www.ssnakess.com/)

Looking on Archive's site, it looks like you can create an account and pay to have a specific website archived on a regular basis. It looks like Amazon, through Alexa Crawl, is already paying to archive herpcenter. If you go to Alexa Crawl's site, it looks like you can create a free account and use that account to, I assume, fill out a form to contact a customer service rep at Alexa Crawl. My guess is that you could tell them what is going on and see if they'll step up their archiving efforts.

Barring that, the owner of any website can transfer their domain and server contract to a new owner. The estate of the former owner of herpcenter could transfer ownership to a moderator or group of moderators as long as the new owner is willing to pay some fees and take over financial responsibility for the site.