Keep B5 fan sites alive

[Random chaos]

Sanfam, Firstones was down for several hours that day.

Chase must have tripped over the power cord again

[Phil Harmonic]

Also,

Feel free to email me about hosting images, files or movies, etc relating to Bab5 universe.

My new email address:

[email protected]

Hehe

[Sanfam]

Well, there we go. And you never told me

Perhaps it was a regional outage. Not a nice thing regardless of where or how it happened, though.

[croxis]

Sanfam, Firstones was down for several hours that day.

[Sanfam]

BAH! I most certainly am a tyrant. C'mon, I've got my mighty iron fist! Well, ok, it's aluminium, but it's still a metal! And I've got minions, too.

Anyway, I knew I was forgetting something. I'll go post up a page on the subdomain.

[Capt.Montoya]

And Capt.Montoya, good point - if someone didn't care enough about their B5 fan site that they let it lapse, it's not likely they're active enough in fandom that they're hanging around here. Probably the better way to get those 'dead' sites back up and running is trying to contact the old adminstrators/owners directly.

Amy, I see this not as archiving lapsed fan sites from people that don't care anymore about them.
Not that I'm suggesting that you see it that way, just pointing that your words could be read that way.

Some disappeared site webmasters might send their backups to the archive, that would be a way to fulfill the idea in Sanfam's offer, but I think it's about more than that: allowing people that still care that their website existed/exists but can't (or won't for whatever reason) keep it online anymore.

Even for those that let their sites lapse, they might still be active in fandom in other ways, thus getting out this message is bound to reach them, or reach a friend of them, or a friend of a friend.
And maybe for some it's as you suggest, they won't care, nothing lost in that case.
But the effort is worth it.
And in fact there's already one site signed up, so the idea does have merit for some.

Sanfam
Could you create a simple index page for the http://archive.firstones.com/ URL?
That one does give 403 and 404 errors.
Maybe a simple repost of your offer as the page displayed, with a more prominent contact info section (or a link to the forums.firstones.com thread), that way anyone seeing the message and that specific link within it will reach something other than a blank page.



P.S. As lurker and occasional poster at the FirstOnes forums I'll say that Sanfam isn't really tyrannical.

[Sanfam]

I'm sorry if I came off as a bit harsh and/or defensive. 'Twas not my intent. Though, I'm actually going to suggest that if anyone ever does find the site to be offline in the future, to send me a PM. I'm always interested in knowing if these sorts of things happen, so was actually quite curious when I read your post. So...lets start again.

Hi!

I'd like to add, though, that many of the old site admins *cannot* be found, as they often used email addresses attached to their hosts or ISP. In my case, all of my old email accounts are long since lost to the war on spam, so even if anyone tried to contact me, they would likely fail to cut through the mess. This is where word of mouth comes in. It's probably the most effective way to spread news, and can reach areas far beyond those accessible by any other means.

[AmyG]

I can't believe people are disputing this. Guys, whatever you may have seen in the days after I posted, or even thirty seconds after I posted, at that moment, 03-10-2006, at 10:41 PM, the site wasn't there. I was connected to the internet, I had about twelve other tabs up and running and my connection was fine, was checking mail at the same time and the connection was running, and I got a 404 when I went to the firstones link. But it was there the next day, so let's just table discussion of whether or not I'm losing my mind or have a fault internet connection or whatever. I'm sure it was just a short-lived problem with the server, or somewhere between my system and their server. Whatever.

And Capt.Montoya, good point - if someone didn't care enough about their B5 fan site that they let it lapse, it's not likely they're active enough in fandom that they're hanging around here. Probably the better way to get those 'dead' sites back up and running is trying to contact the old adminstrators/owners directly.

[Capt.Montoya]

To absent B5 fan sites, in web archive not so bright.

http://web.archive.org/web/20041115051918/http://www.tp2b.de/

Web Archive unfortunately rarely makes a full archive, some images are always missing, some deeply nested pages and non-static webpages are lost, some links go to pages not archived, what is not there would be available at FirstOnes if people take up the offer.

To those at the moderated newsgroup: do you think you could post Sanfam's offer there?
Maybe that way it will reach more people.

I also would like to suggest that DougO posted a link about this archiving offer in the JMSnews homepage.

[Random chaos]

An example of a site that vanished that was both very useful and very much missed is www.tp2b.de. It vanished 1-2 years ago, if I recall right.

--RC

[Biggles]

Since www.firstones.com is currently down, I can't see this great idea firsthand, but I do have a question: who needs saving? Are there any fan sites of note that are in trouble? Why fix it if it ain't broke?

The issue is that while a particular site may not be broken now, it risks becoming broken in the future, and by that point it is often too late to fix it. We simply want to ensure that old fansites (all fansites, not just sites of note) don't die because the original owner forgets about it/gives up on it/runs out of time/runs out of money/a hundred other reasons. As Sanfam said, it's up to site owners if they want to be archived or not. We won't force this on anyone, and we arn't trying to take over other sites.

[Sanfam]

Hey there! Someone over at my site just told me about this thread, and so I thought I'd check it out.

As far as I can tell, FirstOnes wasn't down, nor was it over the past couple of days. I've been transferring files (admittedly irregularly) for a good chunk of the past five days with no apparent problems. I'd suspect a glitch somewhere else along the line (They do happen, and if one does again, please send me word through some means)

As for fansites in trouble...There are always limits on both accessibility and capacity on most free hosts, and many of the smaller ones I've seen floating around are/were hosted on private or isp-provided accounts. The issue is...when they expire or when the subscriber stops paying, the site is lost.

If nobody wants to use it, then that's their choice. I'm just trying to offer up some space to those who might want it.

While I'm not trying to compete with the offer Phil Harmonic made, I do offer individual ftp accounts (if only because it saves me both time and effort for troubleshooting files that are not mine, and allows additions to the sites without any delay due to my response time...which is often slow).

And thanks for the plug, Ranger1.

[Ranger1]

Amy the site is up for me... ill just paste:

Hi there. I'm Sanfam, Administrator/Webmaster and Tyrant Overlord of FirstOnes.com, and I am presenting the B5 community with a unique offer.

We're a dying breed. Babyon 5 fans, that is. There's no doubt about it. The Babylon 5 universe has ceased expanding beyond its initial run. And with it being off the air for so long, we are left with a community who, while consisting of members who have very close ties to one another, are small in number. On top of this, Babylon 5 fansites are starting to be lost in the great void of the internet. Hosting plans and domains expire, and their webmasters move on, either not remembering or no longer caring for their content to pay for it to stay up. I come to you with an offer:

I want to host your sites. With the fairly recent demise of TP2B.de, we lost one of the more famous fansites associated with the B5 universe. What I would like to do is set up a system where I could either store a mirrored copy of your site, or simply offer a more permanent form of hosting. Keep in mind that the site would have to be B5 related, and may not contain any material not permissible by law in the United States of America (where the server hosting this site is located).

I've always felt this site was about the community, and so now it's time to expand its reach a bit. By hosting sites locally and at no cost (though, donations would be graciously accepted...as always), I offer up a chance to help stabilize the B5 fanbase and tighten the circle just a bit. Many of us started with sites hosted on Geocities, Tripod, etc. and moved on to better hosting. However, not everyone did, and these sites are in constant danger of falling off of the face of the internet.

If you are interested, please send me an email at the below address
siteadmin at firstones dot com (will establish a form in the near future...I just want to keep this as spam-free as possible right now)

Remember, this goes to anybody with a B5 site anywhere. If you did decide to move your site over here, you would be given a folder within http://archive.firstones.com/ and exclusive FTP access to said location (though if your site was/is large enough, we could talk and arrange a subdomain...but keeping it under archive.org is preferrable for the purposes of this endeavour).

Once again, that email address is siteadmin at firstones dot com. If you have any questions, either send me an email or post to the comments page in this news item.

Please spread this news around. Actually, if anyone could get in touch with former webmaster of TB2B.de and have him contact me on the address provided, that would be fantastic.

[AmyG]

Since www.firstones.com is currently down, I can't see this great idea firsthand, but I do have a question: who needs saving? Are there any fan sites of note that are in trouble? Why fix it if it ain't broke?

[Phil Harmonic]

I'm willing to archieve information on my hosting, I have 100 gigs and 1000 gigs monthly data transfer.

I cannot give individual ftp access so I'm willing to archieve anything.

This would incude editorials, articles, photos, etc

Anything to help out the B5 community.