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Reviving lost websites ?

Discussion in 'Safe Harbor Initiative' started by Biak, Oct 31, 2011.

  1. Biak

    Biak Boy from Illinois Staff Member

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    I was wondering if there is a way to retrieve and restore and/or save websites that for one reason or another have gone by the wayside. One in particular was Jim Sterling's "web-birds". A search takes you to a mish-mash page of nothingness but I found on "Wayback" archive much of his old site. I have saved a few of the pictures from the site but it is a shame to lose so much great information he compiled.
    Using this link: Web-Birds.Com you can access pictures of many Fighter and Bomber Groups but the main page is lost for all time I guess.
    Mr. Sterling has not been able to be contacted for many years now and I fear the worst.
    Any ideas?
     
  2. Krystal80

    Krystal80 Member

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    I wonder if his domain name hasn't been renewed/paid for maybe you can look around the site that is still available and find a contact? I know my website name is through godaddy and my website is built and paid for on powwebs.com if you can find out who has his domain and names, you may be able to pay to keep it up or to at least copy and archive some of the info? I'm no internet expert, but that is the only idea I came up with.
     
  3. Biak

    Biak Boy from Illinois Staff Member

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    Thanks Krystal, the site has been offline for a few years now and doing a search - it appears several different websites forum members have also been trying to contact Jim. Something to do with "robots . text" ? has shut it down and most of the links are now dead ends. Shame really as there were some excellent pictures and links. I'll keep looking.
     
  4. Otto

    Otto GröFaZ Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Bumping this for later.
     
  5. Otto

    Otto GröFaZ Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Thread pinned.

    I ran a search on the domain registration for Web-Birds. Here is the pertinent info.
    Expires On: April 23, 2017
    Updated On: November 07, 2015
    Registered On: April 22, 1997

    The registrar info is hidden, but the dates makes is appear the same registrar has owned the domain all along. This might be good news if it means the Jim Sterling still has access to the domain & site. Does anyone have an contact info for Mr. Sterling? If you do, please don't post it here, rather contact me via the email in my signature.

    In the meantime I'm very much considering storing the webpages from the wayback machine.

    Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated.
     
  6. Otto

    Otto GröFaZ Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Did a bit more research with no success. It has been years and with a common name not an unexpected result.

    If anyone has any info on Mr Sterling, what state he lived in, where he might be today, know where he may have lived, please message me or email me via the email in my signsture below.
     
  7. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WWII Veteran

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    One of the lesser joys in life is wondering what will happen to all of the stuff one has posted on the internet.

    In the past, I created various Blogs to cover my various interests and included one to duplicate my Army Album.

    I was delighted to find that the Wayback Machine had scanned all of my blogs including my military ones as shown here;
    https://web.archive.org/web/20141219082338/http://ronsactualarmyalbum.blogspot.co.uk/


    ww2talk.com is constantly archived by the same organisation and I can't speak too highly of the ethos behind the site.

    Ron
     
  8. Otto

    Otto GröFaZ Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Ron, I've already started an effort to store your info. If you recall I still have a lot of your posting from early in our WW2Network/WW2Forums life.
     
  9. Otto

    Otto GröFaZ Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    On the web-birds front, I have good news, bad news, and then good news again.

    The good. I spoke to Jim Sterling (aka swissy) yesterday, he is alive and well. Really nice and friendly guy, he was a pleasure to talk to. Since a few people had trouble getting a hold of him for a good while, they feared the worst, thankfully he is doing well.

    The bad. According to Jim the web-birds hosting company suffered a catastrophic server crash and they lost all contents of the site. Recovery was not possible, and the site was lost.

    And the good news again is that Jim was very supportive of my desire to recreate his site from the wayback machine/internet archive. A good amount of the data he created is still there, and with his permission I will try to recover & recreate as much as i am able to.
     
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  10. von Poop

    von Poop Waspish

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    This is a wholesome endeavour.
    The wonderful AKIrk TANKS! site has fallen by the wayside. I saved a copy of that somewhere. Wonder if I still have it.
    (Sample URL: http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/Italy/ItalianTanks.html)
    Pending your peculiar ability to find data owners, that one is a real loss to armoured obscurism.
     
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  11. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WWII Veteran

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    Otto

    Why thank you kind Sir !

    As I have mentioned in the past, I belong to the school of thought that says a person is not truly dead until his name ceases to be mentioned. Anyone who helps to preserve my humble efforts is No.1 in my book.

    Best regards

    Ron
     
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  12. Biak

    Biak Boy from Illinois Staff Member

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    Great news that Jim is fine and doing well. His site had a LOT of interesting and useful information.
     
  13. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    I wonder if some of this could be coordinated with hyperwar? The sites that have actual documents from the war or posts by vetrans would fit in with their remit I think. Opana post here enough that it might be worth bringing up. Coordinating with some of the other WWII sites could also be useful. One of the things that seams to help histrory forums from what I've seen is active participation by authors. This can be of some considerable benefit to them as well although sometimes it requires a bit of a thick skin on thier part. Encourageing them to post here as well as on the other forums might be of benefit to all. Amazon has links either to emails or forums of a fair number of authors which might be a conduit for contacting them and attracting more people to the forums.
     
  14. Otto

    Otto GröFaZ Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    I'm willing to work with anyone, especially someone as dedicated as opanapointer. Right now I'm just measuring what our capabilities are to maintain sites, which is something that is a large commitment since by definition, that commitment is a permanent one.

    I'll let the cat out of the bag a little by letting you know we (WW2Forums & WW 2Talk) are currently working on a new organization/website to store such historical records and data called the WW2 Open Resource Group. It's all driven by the same desire for historical preservation that is driving us to rescue lost websites. Once we get things sorted here, I'll start releasing that platform. Exciting stuff if I do say so myself.
     
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  15. David.W

    David.W Active Member

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    I would like to see the archive of Afrikakorps.org

    Does anyone else share an interest in this "dead" site?
     
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  16. Fred Wilson

    Fred Wilson "The" Rogue of Rogues

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    Otto:
    Any chance to recover our own lost photo galleries?
    There is many an old thread here that would come alive if the image urls worked after recovery.

    I miss Ron Goldstein's in particular.
     
  17. von Poop

    von Poop Waspish

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    Good call. That was a cracking site.
     
  18. Otto

    Otto GröFaZ Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    All good suggestions. I'll need to structure this section a bit better to identify lost sites and track the progress of rescue.

    The current effort with web-birds is going slow but steady. Unfortunately, we won't get the entire site, but 75% capture is realistic.

    Our own galleries are still in the database, though totally unsorted. Within the next few months we are updating a few things with the forums, and the galleries will be re-opened.
     
  19. Fred Wilson

    Fred Wilson "The" Rogue of Rogues

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  20. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    Otto, You can do it!
     

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