apparently some OOOOLD forums still had their templates, like the dark forces discussion forum that had its last post back in 2004, and most recently, the old religous discussion forum has reappeared and become accessable again. Though there are only two threads in it, neither about actual religion ( at the fact there is no archive of any of the legendary discussions) and some other misc forums that have been around over the site's history.

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=16

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=17

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=18

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=21 (a famous hidden one)

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=28



also, why ISN'T there a special hidden one here? http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=42

I nearly got hopeful when I saw the SWG Forum but then I remembered that the original megathread of 2004 got lost with UBB and the follow-up thread lasted a week and I even deleted it. Boh!

Wow, the Religious Discussion forum.

yeah, but unfortunately, you need to look at the internet archive which only achived a few threads, and only the first pages of multi page threads, and only go the threads from the previous two days due to the defaut setting for first time viewers of the site (at least for back then)

Ha, the religious discussion forum was such a worthless hotbed of futility. The only good thing about it was it kept most of that crap out of the discussion forum.

Yeah, they should bring it back.

And install a system that always bans every poster there for 10 days. Ah, tranquility.

http://web.archive.org/web/20021120025402/http://forums.massassi.net/html/Forum10/HTML/000146.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20020906225745/forums.massassi.net/html/Forum10/HTML/000145.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20030825213101/forums.massassi.net/html/Forum10/HTML/000351.html

three lovely examples of massassi history, unfortunately, only the first thread is fully archived.

I got all hopeful when I saw the FoJ only to realize the original Spooky Taco was lost forever.

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=27

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=30

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/forumdisplay.php?f=32 LOL

Yeah. I remember asking Brian about importing threads from the secret forums in 2004 when we first upgraded to VB, I don't remember his exact response (as for SWG Forum he was like "wtf we have a SWG forum?" but nevertheless they weren't imported...

... then again, I vaguely remember them being viewable if one had the exact thread URL since the UBB threads weren't deleted, but they've been defaced for years now so who knows. Probably CM.

I still have a backup of the UBB forums if anyone is interested. The index files are all defaced so I can't just put them up for viewing, but they are there, and the threads themselves seem to be intact.

Although at a glance the oldest threads in there seem to only date back to 2004 :/

Um...do you have the spooky taco thread? Because that would be super.

I thought we were never supposed to link publicly to the hidden forums. That's what makes them hidden.

Watching that makes me feel like I'm falling. It's scary. I dunno why, I just feel like I'm falling. Like when you go down on a rollercoaster and you heart skips. It does that to me.

Hmm, kind of weird since only the Showcase and Discussion Forums were pruned (AFAIK, at leastMain Editing and JO/JA forums are intact from the beginning) in May and December 2003 respectively and naturally all of those threads were imported in 2004...

... so maybe all the forum threads have a 2004 timestamp due to the transfer being carried out in 2004 OR Brian actually got rid of the pre-2004 posts due to lack of HD space. Ah, dunno!

Exactly, everyone knows god's not real.

DO IT

If you can get the software to run, and the index files are intact (they should be), then you can just regenerate all the threads and it should be back to normal. I have no idea how hard it is to get that old software up and running again, but perl is relatively stable (compared to php, especially), so I wouldn't be surprised if all you had to do was set up the permissions properly and the web server of course.

I'd have to either throw it in my cgi-bin or reconfigure the folder for CGI, and every index.html in there is defaced.

Also, about the pruning, I think you were right, I only looked at the discussion forum (forum 1) so it might go further back elsewhere.

Dunno, if I get bored tomorrow maybe I'll make a project of it.