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Broken Links and lost files

LaRetta
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LaRetta Grand Master

LaRetta

Posted
Posted

It has been an ongoing issue but this latest upgrade has made most file links worthless.  When I select a file in a thread to download, I get file ending in html instead of the usual 1192203517-filename.zip format and when opened, it says something went wrong and there is nothing there.  Even removing the '.html' doesn't work.  

I know that Comment has mentioned it already but I am not sure you are aware of the extent of the issue.  As is, there is little in this forum that we can reference without it being broken.

 

Ocean West Grand Master

Ocean West

Posted
Posted

i have a open ticket with developers and it's been escalated to the next level - if you see one report it so that i can have a list of post to spot check when as we work the issue to ensure that the fix resolves the broken links in historical posts. 

 

  • 2 weeks later...
Ocean West Grand Master

Ocean West

Posted
Posted

eventually - I ran out of time between multiple client projects and upcoming international travel.

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
comment Grand Master

comment

Posted
Posted (edited)

i have a open ticket with developers and it's been escalated to the next level

Is there any resolution on the horizon? I cannot link to any of my previously posted answers and demos. I am very frustrated about this.

Edited by comment
Ocean West Grand Master

Ocean West

Posted
Posted

All the ones in this thread were fixed. I personally went thru the database via ESS and FMP to repoint the files and urls and rename files both in the code and in on the server?

If there are others then I am un-aware of them. If they are in the ancient LEGACY fashion url format then I have no means to figure out what the new url is.

In this case it is best to search the forums (or use google site search) and find the thread copy it's url and update your bookmarks.

 

 

 

comment Grand Master

comment

Posted
Posted

In this case it is best to search the forums (or use google site search) and find the thread copy it's url and update your bookmarks.

I am afraid that doesn't work. I recently tried to find my basic invoice demo. I found several threads that mention it, but they all point to the same URL that I have bookmarked and which no longer works. I had the same experience trying to find a calculation of elapsed worked days. These searches cost me a lot of time and did not produce anything.

I have been a member here for over 10 years and posted more than 25,000 times. I really don't appreciate you having thrown all that work away. And how ironic to have this happen on a board that deals with databases. Shame on you, Stephen.

Josh Ormond Mentor

Josh Ormond

Posted
Posted

With all due respect, this isn't the fault of Stephen. This is a forum issue. The forum software itself changed the url linking scheme aw while back ( more than once if I recall correctly ).

I greatly appreciate your time and efforts helping the FM community. But this isn't OW's fault. Nor did he throw away your work. He, and we, have no way to know exactly what the link ended up becoming.

I've seen the same thing happen on EVERY other forum I've ever participated in.

 If they are in the ancient LEGACY fashion url format then I have no means to figure out what the new url is.

Ocean West Grand Master

Ocean West

Posted
Posted (edited)

 @comment  here is a FMP file that has the all your posts, perhaps you can find what your looking for by searching the body text, to find the valid URL? There is also the conversation table that I had but it's a hit or miss. Additionally I have the legacy database I as a post table there perhaps a search there can give you results to give you more tears to search on in the current version, to find the current valid url.

 

 

Edited by Ocean West
new attachment
LaRetta Grand Master

LaRetta

Posted
  • Author
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Hi Stephen,

When I attempt to unzip this file, it produces a file called:  comment's_comments.fmp12.zip.cpgz which I can't seem to open.  I'm not sure it worked properly.  It isn't the apostrophe either because if I remove it, it still produces the same result.  I used both RAR Extractor and the standard Archive utility app.

comment Grand Master

comment

Posted
Posted

Why are you dumping this in my lap? This is not my private problem. Most if not all internal links are broken. Anyone browsing here that comes upon a "see also..." will end up empty-handed. If you don't care about that, that's fine - it's your forum. I already told you I don't intend to spend any more time on this.

LaRetta Grand Master

LaRetta

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)

It is a great loss for all of us.   I keep a database of links from here which are now worthless.  And now, forever, folks will click links here that break.

I've decided to never trust a website to keep hold of information I deem incredibly valuable.  I remember another FileMaker website which simply closed down and we lost a tremendous wealth of knowledge.   TechNet also has many broken links from their migration which truly amazed me.

If there is nothing that can be done about it then so be it, but I am upset by the break of links here as well and saying so does not make us the bad guys.  I can tell you, being in the database business, I have accidentally scrambled client data and guess what?  *I* was responsible for fixing it even if I had to correct one record at a time.  I cannot imagine the web developers being let off the hook, either back then on LEGACY data  or now.

We hold ourselves accountable and so should they.

Edited by LaRetta
Ocean West Grand Master

Ocean West

Posted
Posted

Please be aware of the following. I maintain this site out of pure passion for FileMaker it is not my full-time job - (at times it seems so) - I am a consultant and have other clients that I have to manage. I spend many hours working on the site to ensure performance and continuity. 

The forums have gone thru several transitions - from a CGI script where every post was a file to ubbThreads then switched to FusionBB and was running on this version until the company behind it closed up shop in 2010. That's when we switched to the current platform IPB. When we converted we took a hit since the url schema was different and any google juice earned was lost - even with redirects it took awhile for the site to get some of that back, since the site was better optimized for search engines and bots, it did help.

I have been a small voice on the developers own forums providing feedback and testing early alphas and betas and doing many dry runs by making backup copies of this site and doing test upgrades. This past spring we upgraded from v3 to v4 which was a full rewrite of the platform and did encounter some un-expected hiccups with some broken file paths and links - none of which occurred in my testing; to the best of my knowledge these issues are fixed. 

And there was no point switching yet to another vendor as I have done exhaustive searches and reviews of other platforms and there were too many tradeoffs the main one being loss of much invested time and energy learning the system and the fact I have nearly as many posts on their site as i do here. 

Speaking of the LEGACY transition between back in 2010 the site was ran thru a converter and a join table was created that mapped the old topic / post id's to the new topic/post id's and it included a few php scripts that lived at the root of the site so that LEGACY urls would redirect. - These scripts no longer function in the most current version. 

External Links found on Google searches will point to the new url since the bots have indexed the site. Any private bookmark that you have made in the legacy format is out of my control and there is no way to redirect that link. 

Internal links such as links found on posts made on or before 2010 some have these embedded in the post field out of the 436538 posts in the post table of which ~2123 posts contain at least one or more links with the legacy format "showtopic.php" and ~953 records have the legacy "showpost.php".

Since I am not a PHP or SQL programmer so I am not going to attempt anything on the backend however I can touch the forums database thru ESS you know filemaker is the preverbal hammer to everything else.

I am open to suggestions and looking for productive assistance to attempt to figure out how to convert something like 

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/183978/post/238851/hl/

into something like

http://fmforums.com/topic/49384-total-of-dateend-datestart/?do=findComment&comment=232134

this needs to be done by looking at the raw post field and parsing out the strings and then taking the old ID numbers and doing a search on the conversion table to get the new id then replace the url to the other format (adding additional html as needed)

as it stands now I have been not working (unpaid) for the past 2 weeks recovering from surgery and as I mend I must focus on my clients and catch up on work.

I do not have an estimation when I can fix this but I am aware of it and have tinker a bit and manually made some changes to some posts, but that is way too tedious to do this manually.

If you have something productive or something I can work with then I am open to suggestions. 

 

Lee Smith

Lee Smith

Posted
Posted (edited)

I was ready to reply to this thread, just as Stephen posted his. So I modify mine a bit. 

No one knows better then I, just how hard Stephen works to keep the FM Forums as one of the best, if not the best, place to get answers to FileMaker questions. To think that Stephen would jeopardize his, or the FM Forums’ reputation, by intentionally trashing files, links etc. is ludicrous and as a member I certainly know better than that, and I hope you do too.

The rewrite of the forum software was suppose to be an upgrade (?) over what we were currently using, and our beta-testing found few errors, which were fixed by the developer. Now it appears there were more underling problems then we found. It’s apparent that the software was not ready for prime time. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with it now, so we have been submitting fixit-tickets to the developer as we discover the problems. 

BTW, I do have copies of most of the attachments (FileMaker only) that were posted since I became a member on May 16, 2001. I also have a database of the Forum which runs the gamut of inception to November 30, 2010 (when we were forced to change in the providers).  So if you are looking for something specific, let me know and I’ll see I can find it too.

 Anyway, we are doing the best we can to make these changes that are needed.

 Lee

Edited by Lee Smith
so if you ar...
LaRetta Grand Master

LaRetta

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Wow, nobody said Stephen deliberately intentionally trashing anything.  I know also how much Stephen has put into this website.  And he knows how much I appreciate his commitment.

I'm done with this conversation.  It seems it is going to a very negative place which was not my intent.  The fact that Stephen is or is not being paid or is or is not committed isn't the point at all.  And the defensiveness is turning me off big time.

Lee Smith

Lee Smith

Posted
Posted

I suggest you re-read comments remark

“I really don't appreciate you having thrown all that work away. And how ironic to have this happen on a board that deals with databases. Shame on you, Stephen"

LaRetta Grand Master

LaRetta

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I do not need to be reminded to read a thread, Lee.  Just like any of us dislikes being told by an OP to re-read a thread ... it is unnecessary because we DO read everything in a thread.

I will let Comment speak for himself if he wishes.  I will no longer respond here.

LaRetta Grand Master

LaRetta

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I do not wish to discuss the other posts in this thread but I WILL discuss how to resolve it and it should be resolved.  I also have the full database prior to the archive, including attachments, that Stephen gave me.   

As a start, maybe we can have a posted notice to direct folks in the process of retrieval if they find a link broken or file missing (which is large chunk of the forum now).  And, behind the scenes, maybe we can work out a plan on fixing them, one by one if necessary.  Stephen doesn't have to do this alone.

I know nothing about PHP nor any of this but I can STILL do the work if shown what needs to happen.  Maybe others here who DO know this stuff can help their own forum (because although Stephen is the father, we all are its children) and it can be resolved.

bruceR Grand Master

bruceR

Posted
Posted

Thanks SO much for everybody's hard work and valuable work here! For me, this is still the best FileMaker forum going. I'm sure Stephen is frustrated with the situation and it's clear he works hard on it and that it is important to him.

Josh Ormond Mentor

Josh Ormond

Posted
Posted

I have, back-channel, also thrown my hat in the ring to help fix the links. I wouldn't expect Stephen, or comment, or anyone else to do it themselves, either.

All else aside, I know everyone here has passion. That's a good thing.

If we can come up with a plan, I can throw in a little time each day to fix links. Even if it's somewhat manual, a little at a time will get it fixed.

  • Like 1
docasar Enthusiast

docasar

Posted
Posted

Hello,

I am having a hard time trying to access the old links shown in this post: http://fmforums.com/topic/74910-display-containers-fields-as-a-grid/#comment-444818 which talk about showing container content in Grid view :

- http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/241840

- http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/269763

- http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/214749

Any idea on how to access to this content would be of great help,

Thanks a lot!

Luis

Lee Smith

Lee Smith

Posted
Posted

 

- http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/241840

This link is fixed and I posted the new link in the post you made to layout

- http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/269763

I removed this link, it was a reply in the same thread 241840

- http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/214749

this is the link now

http://fmforums.com/topic/44724-stored-multi-field-finds-simulated-in-a-filtered-portal-with-paging-beta-85/

 

mr_vodka Grand Master

mr_vodka

Posted
Posted

I do find it kind of strange that the software puts the title as part of the URL instead of just using a post number as previous versions.  Perhaps a few of us can try to somehow reconcile the issue working together.

 

  • 2 weeks later...
LaRetta Grand Master

LaRetta

Posted
  • Author
Posted

 

Perhaps a few of us can try to somehow reconcile the issue working together.

Please count me in for that team!  I do not wish to lose this momentum.  Stephen won't have to worry about it at all if we (specifically I) can be lined up with the process.  

And Bruce, I agree with you completely for once (smile) ... this IS the best FileMaker forum out there, thanks to Stephen and those dedicated to assisting here.

What do we need to do to get this going?  Have a meeting to discuss ideas or ?  :smile3:

  • Like 1

This topic is 3368 days old. Please don't post here. Open a new topic instead.

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