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Is it possible for a member to "file" or "personally archive" certain threads?

Started by scsmith42, September 03, 2006, 04:07:43 PM

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scsmith42

I frequently read posts that I would like to archive personally, so I can refer to their great advice at a later period in time.  To date, I've been printing them off and filing them, but it sure would be nice if there was an electronic way to do this.

Is there?

Thanks.  Scott
Peterson 10" WPF with 65' of track
Smith - Gallagher dedicated slabber
Tom's 3638D Baker band mill
and a mix of log handling heavy equipment.

Tom

When it comes to this type of thing, I'm usually in the same fix you are.   

Here is what I think is a good approach.

The Knowledge Base, find it in Forum Extras, is available for members to submit posts, jokes, recipes, sawing tips, and all manner of things that they would like to have recorded in a place were it will be easily found, fit under a heading, and benefit all members.  There are quite a few posts in there already that were lifted from the forum in their totality.  There are some that have personal notes imbedded to call attention to important parts. Most have the name of the person who wrote the information as well as the person who submitted it , in the post somewhere.   Some of the information is original and doesn't even appear on the forum.   It's a good place to put things.   

Once you have formatted the information, it is then sent to the Knowlege Base Administrators to be approved for addition to the data base.  An effort is made to check for duplicates and to edit for spelling, etc., if necessary

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Another thing I just discovered, because a member told me he was doing it. (I feel dumb when I haven't thought of stuff like this before)  He is putting the link of the post he wants to refer to into his "Favorites".  Now why couldn't I have thought of something simple like that?
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there is a print function at the top right of the threads that will format the threads into a printable format.
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You can also send a thread to a friend with the "Send Topic" button and send it to yourself.
That doesn't get you the print-out of the thread or post, but it will send you a link to that post and the option to write what you want about the link. 

Then, when you get the email, you can store it in an email folder that will catagorize it for later referance.

I'm sure there must be other ways.

I've found that I usually rely on the Knowlegdge Base and the Search function of the forum.
Letting the forum do the storing fits my lifestyle a lot better than trying to keep it myself.  As much as I try to be organized, I find that I'm basically a slob. :D

Mooseherder

Heck, I have been copying, e-mailing myself and saving in my Mail Inbasket the threads and posts of interest. This is what is in there now.
Swampdonkey's Tree species on Woodlot.  Because we basically have these on our lot and I want to be able to identify each one. ;D

Quinton's Scaled Cabin Plans. Because I love his thread. smiley_flipping

Jeff's posted Spark's Sawmill layout. Cause I'll need that down the road when we put our Iron Back together. ;)

Brad's Crockpot Clam Chowder. Because I love food and Chowder!
digin_2
JKJ's posting photos in Photoshop instruction. Cause I need all the help I can get when it comes to puters. smiley_chinese
and
Tom's Board Foot Calculation explanation. Because before that there post, I didn't know what 4/4, 5/4 and 6/4 was.  Now I do! 8)

caryr

The most straight forward way to save all post to a thread is to use the "all" or "print" link to get all the post on one page if it is more than one page long and then use something like PDFcreator (a free program located here) to print the information to a PDF file. The "print" link is probably better if you plan to print in the future since it is more compact and is B&W.

Ianab

Or.. you could just create a subfolder in your Internet Favourites.
Then add a link to each of your favourite threads in there. Change the name of the link when you create it to make them easy to find again.

Cheers

Ian
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

Onthesauk

Yeah Ian, except you should see my favorites list.  I've got so many I can't find anything in there.  I broke down a couple of days ago and threw out a 100 or so and organized the rest but still a mass of them there.
John Deere 3038E
Sukuki LT-F500

Don't attribute irritating behavior to malevolence when mere stupidity will suffice as an explanation.

PineNut

When I see something I would like to keep, I will just copy it and put it in MS word. Then give it a name and stash it away somewhere on the hard drive, never to be seen again. Well I do go back and look at some of them when I want to look up something and on occasion I print one out.

wesdor

I save threads of interest to my hard drive as web archives.  Using Safari, I go under the file menu and choose "save as".  then I can give it any title I wish.  Will FireFox do the same thing?

There are some great pieces of information on this board!

caryr

Yes "Save Page As" or CTRL-S works under Firefox. What I don't like about this method is that every page you save to a file also has an included directory for all the images, etc. You still need to remember to get any multi page threads onto a single page.

scsmith42

All good info - thanks.

I have not yet checked out the Knowledge Base - something tells me that I'm not going to be getting much sleep this week...

I like the "favorites" link idea too.

Thanks again.

Scott
Peterson 10" WPF with 65' of track
Smith - Gallagher dedicated slabber
Tom's 3638D Baker band mill
and a mix of log handling heavy equipment.

rewimmer

Those who save everything in Mozilla Foxfire under bookmarks as I do, can back them up by doing the following. Go to bookmarks, click on manage bookmarks, click on file, then export them where ever you want. Put a copy on cd or floppy incase of crash. I also do the same thing in Mozilla Thunderbird with my email addresses. You can do the same with Microsoft Explorer and email program.

jkj

Although this forum seems pretty stable and will probably be around forever (!), I usually don't like to rely on saving only links to important information.  I've been burned too many times when URLs change or web pages and entire sites went missing.  For things I really want to keep, I keep copies of the info itself on my local systems.

I like to save threads as text files since a text file is small and easy to search.   I select everything, copy, paste into Notepad, then clean up a bit if I have time.  Keeping things in a text file lets me easily edit to update, delete messages that are not useful, and add related information from other sources.  (It would be nice to click a button for a "printable" version of a thread as a forum option.)  I selectively drag relevant photos to the same directory where I place the file.

One thing I recommend when copying text from a web page: also copy the URL and paste that as the first line of the text file so you can more easily get back to the page if necessary.  This is not as handy as saving a shortcut as a favorite, but I think it is easier to manage and has certain advantages.


BTW, when saving links, in addition to saving a shortcut in the Favorites, you can easily save the link as a shortcut file in a directory - just drag the IE icon in the address bar and drop it in an open directory (admittedly much easier with dual monitors.)  Double click on the file name in Explorer to fire up the browser and open the page.  I use this method to create a subdirectory full of related links that I want to keep together and revisit easily.  I like using a subdirectory rather than the Favorites since I can keep other related files an info in the same area.  For example, in my Beekeeping directory I keep a subdirectory of links to beekeeing forums, a subdirectory full of equipment plans, files of tips, etc. - all together and easy to manage.

If the thread has photos important to the topic, Save All from the IE file menu is a good way to save the entire page as an HTML file (for archiving and viewing off line) on your local machine, with the photos stored in a subdirectory with the same name.  Unfortunately this gets a lot of unnecessary stuff as well, such as little smiley, vendor's image links, etc., but it does look just like the original web page. 

JKJ

PS: Ain't much use is saving it if you don't back it up!  I generally copy to multiple machines and to external removable disk drives, going on the theory that having three to five independent copies of important things is relatively safe.
LT-15 for farm and fun

caryr

Quote from: jkj on September 04, 2006, 09:39:05 PM
... It would be nice to click a button for a "printable" version of a thread as a forum option. ...

You might want to take a look at the print button at the top of the page!

jkj

Quote from: caryr on September 04, 2006, 11:24:51 PM
Quote from: jkj on September 04, 2006, 09:39:05 PM
... It would be nice to click a button for a "printable" version of a thread as a forum option. ...
You might want to take a look at the print button at the top of the page!

Thanks, I'd forgotton about that -- it is a much quicker way to save clean text files. 

Unfortunately it seems to provide links to the photos instead of embedding them.  How about a "Print with Photos" button (or an preferences option to display the photos in the files instead of the links)?  That would make a great way to make a clean and complete html archive using the IE Save As command. 

Or is there a way I missed that already presents a clean page with photos?

JKJ
LT-15 for farm and fun

SwampDonkey

What you can do is create a 'new folder' and name it what you wish, and in Firefox go under 'File/Save Page As' and a file lister comes up to direct the web page to that folder and name it what you want. Save it as 'Web Page, Complete' You can open the saved web page within Word. I'm using Word 2000. I would assume any program that reads web pages would display it. You could even create a PDF document with some programs.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

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