Quote:
Originally posted by Dave Davidson1:
Other than print, I don't know how to retrieve and store old posts. Without a data dictionary and pointers, I expect it would be pretty unwieldy.

Just how big is this sucker? Anybody have an estimate? Like sales of past mag issues, it sounds like a possible business opportunity for PB.
DD:

I did a WAG with 9 threads I have saved as HTML files. This is the most compact way I know of to save them to disk. They look the same when you view them as they did originally. The downside is it uses maybe 20 files for each "page" of a thread.

These 9 threads varied from 6 to 17 posts each. Some of them (e.g. Condello's BG sexing method) contain a lot of photos. So I think they are fairly average.

I got an average storage space figure of 5.3 kB per post.

I just took a snapshot of the "Forum Home" screen, and it totals 44,388 posts from all the categories. Multiplying times 5.3 kB per post gives 235,256 kB or 229.75 MB as the estimated amount of storage space to hold the entire forum in HTML files. That's about a third of a CD-ROM.

Attention Bob and J.P.: I would pay $100 for a nice, shiny CD with a copy of the PB forum on it. Condello would too.

"Live like you'll die tomorrow, but manage your grass like you'll live forever."
-S. M. Stirling
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