How to Manually Recover Your Old Posts After the Data Loss of Feb 2010

[groovezog]

This is easier than you think, and with enough work from everyone, we can get all the important stuff back.
I have just restored my for sale thread. This is how I did it:
Google stores cached versions of all the pages that it crawls. This is, essentially, an archive of all the visible pages on ephatch. When searching for something using Google, you may have noticed a gray link at the bottom of some results that says "Cached". This is a link to the content that Google has stored, on it's own servers, for this page.

- Enter into a Google search box "site:ephatch.com/forum <username>" and replace "<username> with your username. ex: "site:ephatch.com/forum groovezog" will return all the pages that I have posted or posted a reply in.
- There is an option at the end of the results to "repeat the search with omitted results" which will return absolutely everything that Google has stored.
- Find the result for a page that you would like to see a cached version of, and right-click on the title, then select "Copy Link Location".
- Then, in a new window, open up a new Google search, this entering in the search box "cache:<linkToPageURL>" replacing "<linkToPageURL>" with the full link to the original page. ex: I entered "cache:http://www.ephatch.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73430" and found the cached version of my for sale thread.
- Select all the text, and then copy it and paste it into a new thread on ephatch.com.

Voila!

If you have images on your post, there is an extra step. Here is a tutorial that I have written for people wishing to recover posts with lots of pictures on them:

I am using the browser FireFox, and I have installed the extension called Firebug, which can be found here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

Begin the following steps after finding the cached version of your post using the method above.

1. Install this addon, and then navigate to the cached version of the page you would like to restore.

2. Find the little bug icon in the bottom right of your browser that looks like this:


3. Click this icon to open Firebug.

4. Click once on "inspect" (where the blue arrow is) and then hover your cursor over the beginning of your thread (not on the title, but in the content area, where the red arrow is.). It will look like this:


5. Click once on the <div id="post_message_1234565678"> (the green arrow) to highlight the content of the post, then click on "edit" (the pink arrow). Firebug will then open a box that looks like this:


6. Highlight and copy all the code BETWEEN, but NOT including, the "<div id="post_message_123456789">" AND the "</div>" as shown in the image above (everything we need is highlighted in blue).

7. Paste this code into notepad, like this:



- Now we will do a "find and replace" for the image code that we have, and replace it with the image code that is used for putting images into a post.

8. In notepad, go to "Edit > Replace..."


9. Replace this exact code:

<img border="0" onload="NcodeImageResizer.createOn(this);" alt="" src="

with this exact code:

[img]

10. Replace this exact code:

"/>

with this exact code:

[/img]

11. Now, you should be able to copy everything that is in notepad directly into a new thread.


Hopefully this helps a lot of people recover some of their "How To" threads as well as the good build threads that were up.

[oldschoolimport]

I just went thru all 20 pages looking for the field party thread, and didn't see it.

[kprocivic]

imma let the pros do this. i got to about step 1 and felt overwhelmed.

[thehulme]

"This is easier than you think" followed by super technical looking photos and instructions made me laugh a little (no offense :) ). thanks for spelling it out, maybe we can get the site back in order.

[SHG_EasyE]

LOL its too bad the only thing i lost was basically the biggest members ride thread on the site. Not about to transfer 70+ pages this way, so i guess everyone loses out once again.

[slate13530]

LOL its too bad the only thing i lost was basically the biggest members ride thread on the site. Not about to transfer 70+ pages this way, so i guess everyone loses out once again.

Well I tried helping you by performing the search above and the majority of the things that come up are your "FS" threads....

[SHG_EasyE]

Well I tried helping you by performing the search above and the majority of the things that come up are your "FS" threads....

Thanks dude, I tried aswell and got the same results. Didnt see anything from my build thread :/

[slate13530]

Yeah I tried all types of different things.

Did you change your rear wheels yet? I remember that was the last thing you had mentioned.

[SHG_EasyE]

Not yet, Im ordering the rear wheels and 4 new tires this week. Im going to start a new thread with a small recap of what ive done and start fresh from here on out. As soon as I get home Ive got some new pictures to kick it off.

[slate13530]

sounds good.