AutoHotkey Community

Is there a recommended way to backup forum posts:

E.g. one method could be this:

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- Go to the search page which lists all your posts:
AutoHotkey Community - Search
https://autohotkey.com/boards/search.ph ... 6&sr=posts

- Retrieve the links from each 'Jump to post':
e.g. https://autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic ... 87#p148287

- Convert them to the Edit post page:
e.g. https://autohotkey.com/boards/posting.p ... 3&p=148287

- Open each page, and extract the innerText from the 'message' element.
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Is there a better way, e.g. more direct, or a way that causes the minimum load on the website? Cheers.

[EDIT:] Basically I save them as UTF-8 text files, where the filename is something like '12 12345 123456.txt'.

Unless you have db access... not really...

Thanks, well I like to do this every so often. I could do it manually, although some methods were detecting bot-like activity and blocking me. What I might ask is let's say, I have about 1000 posts, I did all 1000, what time gap should I put between retrieving each page, or can I just do it as rapidly as possible. Is one user repeatedly checking pages a burden on the system, or a drop in the ocean. Btw if you'd prefer to give any information by DM, that's fine. Cheers.

If you do get blocked... Simply send me an email. And I will unblock you

Thanks for your response, I'll put in a delay of some seconds. By 'blocked' I meant putting in certain urls and navigating to them, didn't work, and there was some text saying you didn't have access to it, but then it would work if you did it manually. Ironically, some of the workarounds for automating this, that I've considered, may put more of a burden on the website (than if you could access those urls directly).

Anyway, backing up posts every few months, is useful (e.g. for searching posts, and if I accidentally overwrite a good/big post), and I don't have hard copies of a vast number of my posts. Plus, past and recent forum issues and the fact that one of my posts has been 'eaten' and is currently irretrievable does make me a little edgy. Many thanks for your work and Tank's work. Cheers.

[EDIT:] Btw we don't see you or Tank too much on the main forum, right? Plus, you're more on the French forum I think. Cheers again.

No, I've just been quite busy with work. But I'm still here! I can always be reached by email.

I just dont post alot

tank wrote:I just dont post alot

LOL. We definitely need to have a voting system in comments.

Great response Tank.

Btw I've backed up all my forum posts now.