'Browse or search the old BB4W forum' broken

[Hated Moron]

I've just noticed that the 'Browse or search the old BB4W forum' link at the bottom of the forum's home page is not working: it's returning a 404 error. It links to the copy of the old forum hosted at David Williams's 'proggies.uk' site. Checking proggies.uk itself, that is up, so I'm not sure what is going on, especially as nobody has heard anything from David for some months.

Can anybody shed any light on this?

[DDRM]

All I can add is that the link from Proggies itself also throws a 404 error, so the problem is probably that end rather than this.

D

[Hated Moron]

All I can add is that the link from Proggies itself also throws a 404 error, so the problem is probably that end rather than this.

I don't follow. The link from the forum's front page is directly to 'proggies.uk', not through any intermediary or proxy (hover your mouse over the link and check what the target is!). There isn't a "this end", or have I misunderstood?

There was a wealth of information at the old forum, and if it cannot be restored it's a terrible loss (it's not backed up at the Internet Archive, just the front page). If that appears to be the case you'll need to remove the link, but it's another major blow to my willingness to carry on.

[Hated Moron]

On 16/06/2022 18:36, Maksim AbuAjamieh wrote (cross-posted from the Discussion group):

The site being up does not necessarily mean the server configuration and content is still the same..

No, but it makes it more likely that the files have been deleted, either deliberately or through the hosting service having declared them unsafe in some way. I do vaguely remember David Williams saying that he was having trouble with other files on his site having disappeared without any action on his part.

Had the site not been reachable, that would have been a simpler (and perhaps only temporary) explanation.

What URL do you get when you hover? (I do not use the forum directly).

http://www.proggies.uk/bb4w_forum/bb4w. ... index.html

[Hated Moron]

I have been trawling through my PCs and disks to see if I can find a backup of the old BB4W forum, and I've found a Zip file which appears to contain at least some of it. I'm not sure of its provenance, but it's better than nothing so I've uploaded it here (this is an unencrypted, 'insecure', site so your browser is likely to warn you):

http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/bb4w_forum/b ... index.html

If it seems to be working can I ask DDRM please to update the link on the front page here to point to this URL rather than proggies.uk (remember that on most browsers you will need to right-click on it and select 'Copy link', don't try to copy-and-paste it from this post because of the ellipsis).

[Edja]

If it seems to be working can I ask DDRM please to update the link ....

I've followed the link, disregarded the browser warning and it looks like it works fine
Edja

[Ric]

Works fine for me too

Kind regards Ric

[DDRM]

OK, I think I've updated the link. Let me know if there are problems.

[Hated Moron]

OK, I think I've updated the link. Let me know if there are problems.

Thanks. I don't think the search feature is working (not your fault, of course); whether that's just a temporary thing and might come good in time I'm not sure.

[RNBW]

I use the following link on my Android tablet to access the old forum:
www.bbcbasic.com/oldforum/bbcbasic.conf ... index.html

I can't remember where I picked this up from, but it works. Unfortunately you can't carry out a physical search within the site, but you can step between the topics.