BPAL forum??

[kore]

Maybe slightly OT but where the heck is bpal.org? It's been down for days and days and I haven't seen any news about it anywhere. I love that place.

Comments

[teaotter]

Posted on their Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/bpal.org) on 5/22:

Hello everyone!

As you are aware, the forum is down. We've encountered some pretty serious technical difficulties, and are working with a new tech team to set things right. Unfortunately, it will likely be down for a few days more, as it looks like we will have to totally upgrade our board software in order to get us up and running again!

We apprise you of the forum's ETA as soon as we have a more exact figure. Thank you for your patience!

[kore]

Ah thank you, I don't really do Facebook.....someone there did point out there's a Wayback archive of the reviews, which selfishly is what I'm most worried about -- I love those! http://web.archive.org/web/20140213215939/http://www.bpal.org/forum/3-reviews/

[teaotter]

I don't do Facebook either, but I saw someone else link to this elsewhere. There don't seem to be any updates since 5/22, though.

The reviews are the most useful section! I found the archive version hard to navigate through, but someone pointed out a trick -- If you do a Google search, the second line of each result has a little downward pointing arrow at the end (after the url) -- if you click on that, you can see the cached copy. No more hunting desperately for a particular scent!

[kore]

OH NICE, thank you! I love the reviews! It'd be heartbreaking to lose them.

[lunabee34]

The only problem with that is that you then only get the cached first page of the reviews. If the reviews are in multiple pages you then have to go through a few machinations.

Here's what smilla told me:

If you really want the most recent Google Cache stuff, and are willing to go to more fuss to get it, this is awkward and slow but works quite consistently:

- pull up the cached front page of a review, like so:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XKh7B59WiJYJ:www.bpal.org/topic/124-doves-heart/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

- hover over the link to the next page and copy the URL for the next page; in this entry it's http://www.bpal.org/topic/124-doves-heart/page__st__25

- now either do a Google search on that URL, or plug it in directly here: http://www.cachedpages.com/

Once you've got that first link to Page 2, you can save a step because all of BPAL.org's comment pages go up in increments of 25. So Page 3 will be at the cached entry for http://www.bpal.org/topic/124-doves-heart/page__st__50, Page 4 will be http://www.bpal.org/topic/124-doves-heart/page__st__75, and so on, so you can just keep repasting that first link you got and editing the comment number before you search on the page.

I can't get this method to work beyond page five though. :(

[synecdochic]

There's an update in the comments inside that post, posted a few days back. No real movement, though.

I would not count on the forum being back up anytime soon, but I don't think the data will be lost. (I know a little bit of what the issue is from looking at it from the outside.)

[kaberett]

... oh dear I am choking on my sporfling, and simultaneously wishing the new tech team all the best. >>;

[lunabee34]

I haven't posted any more BPAL reviews because some terrible complete-ist part of me feels like I have to read all the reviews before I write about them. *cries*