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I have been using Ubuntu/Xubuntu for more than 15 years. I have 10 pages of threads in Ubuntu Forums. I would like to download these, with all the replies, to my computer. For me they contain very valuable information of how I solved problems and how the system worked. How can I do this before it is deleted????Any help appreciated…
What I’ve Tried:
I was not aware anything was going to be deleted
There is indeed no intent to delete anything for several years.
We are relying upon a third-party to preserve UbuntuForums in an accessible, read-only status, and to keep hosting that read-only archive.
We have their word. Not a contract.
I trust that third-party to do the right thing and live up to their word.
Just as we exhort folks to back up their data, preserving your favorite threads is a sensible idea, and how to do so is a very good question.
I suggest that OP researches old threads of Ubuntu Forum through the Wayback Machine. Go to a Wayback snapshot (it will take time to retrieve) then Advanced Search by User Name to see your old threads (or by other User Names). Once they are in Wayback Machine snapshot they should not be deleted. I am exploring ways of extracting that corpus of ideas.
P.S. I encourage others to visit Wayback Machine to create snapshots and optionally donate to keep this valuable service alive.
@dragonfly41 If I am not mistaken if a page has not yet been archived you can ask for it to be added.
The image below is just of a very recent thread as an example.
I have been checking and many older threads, which I suppose would be relevant for those who were on UF over a longer time period, have already been archived.
Yes, that is what I found and I had to explicitly archive threads of future interest (such as my own old threads). For example, go through the past major contributors such as TheFu and archive their ideas.
I have been through a previous “sunset” such as old Atom forum when Github ditched Atom Electron editor in favour of VSCode. Many threads lost. This is why for long posts involving scripts I am considering just posting links to a zerotrust vault so that my own threads can be held and edited later. For example reusable Jupyter Notebooks. Thus I will keep my own Wayback Machine.
Monolith is a tool you can use to take snapshots of pages to one file, for viewing later, offline.
snap install monolith
monolith https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2501735 -o 2501735.html
open 2501735.html
Also, if you would prefer to capture your threads as plain text files, I just made a Python script to do that. It also saves threads as JSON, in case you want to import it into something else.
@popey I installed Monolith using the Snap Store.
In the terminal, adding a thread from Ubuntu Forums went smoothly though I did spot some errors (?) along the way.
Opening the thread also went smoothly and looked as if I was on UF again 
Here is my question: the html file is not stored under snap > monolith under one of the 3 folders but rather in the home folder.
Is this the expected behaviour?
I am wondering what happens if I save dozens of threads, if not more.
What is your recommended solution?
Thanks for this wonderful little app, I really like it
It stores the file where you tell it to store the file. If you’re sat in the home directory and run it as I suggested, that’s where the html file will end up. You can put it anywhere you like, that the snap has access to.
