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Re: Web-searchable list archives



Regarding the web-based archives...I have some bad news and some good news. :-/
 
First, the bad news is that my down-and-dirty method of using the large monthly logfiles as a way to get Google to add these discussions was a failure because Google apparently sets a limit on the page size it will index. And nothing that Lsoft provided would provide the necessary files.
 
The good news is that this forced me to actually go down the road of using some real list archiving software. Fortunately there is some decent GNU freeware out there for this purpose. The result is that after tinkering most of today with it, I've got web-based discussion list archives of this list's entire history up and running with sorting by thread or date! I can incrementally update this archive, so depending on volume I can update it monthly, weekly, or whatever. And it ought to be a format that will make Google happy too.
 
In the conversion process from Outlook to Thunderbird (Mozilla) to Mhonarc, it lost some of the extra html formatting on many of the posts, but for the most part, the content came through unscathed. It even brought over message attachments (I think there was only only one - but it was something Judith posted written by her father.) This was better than I had hoped. In the future, I'll have copies of posts go directly to Thunderbird which should (in theory, anyway) allow html formatting to be fully retained.
 
You can check them out at: www.panmere.com/rosen/mhout/maillist.html
 
Let me know what you think. In the future, I'll look into adding search capabilities to it, but right now I have to give my brain a little rest. :)
 
Regards,
Tim
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:***On Behalf Of Judith Rosen
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 4:36 PM
To: ***
Subject: Re: Web-searchable list archives

Tim,
 
I think this is a terrific idea. A lot of these discussions have the potential for a very long shelf-life; certainly as long as any companion publication to my father's work would have. I'm impressed at the amount of work you are putting into it, but it certainly guarantees you a place in the history of science and philosophy at the very least. I would like to personally and publicly thank you for thinking of it.
 
Regards,
Judith Rosen
 
From: Tim Gwinn
To: ***
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 10:08 AM
Subject: [ROSEN] Web-searchable list archives

FYI -
 
I have created an additional webpage on my website to store the monthly archives of our list posts. The monthly archives are quite large, and it would be quite tedious to manually convert the monthy logfiles into a pretty, threaded format. (Anyone out there a Perl expert?) So, I have just made them large webpages which will allow access by webcrawlers and for text searches; but readers are referred to the indexed archives on the Lsoft website for easier reading.
 
It may take up to a month for webcrawlers to update their databases with the new pages.
 
Regards,
Tim