"thejustache" (thejustache)
11/04/2019 at 13:45 • Filed to: None
11
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"thejustache" (thejustache)
11/04/2019 at 13:45 • Filed to: None | 11
| 19 |
The long awaited oppopacolypse comes... and then seemingly stops just as quickly as it began. While it seems we have more time here, I for one don’t feel super secure with “G/O Media is reevaluating the options for maintaining Kinja user pages and they will remain accessible at this time ”.
While we might be able to post and use oppo on kinja for some time to come, backing up any posts worth saving and figuring out a permanent home to post is still probably a good idea. Fortunately, there are options. At the risk of adding to the noise, I’ve tried to compile the options to one place since the information seems scattered everywhere:
The oppo lifeboat: Discord
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Over 200 strong and rising. Most everyone there has carried over their usernames and icons. ‘But I like the blog format!’ you cry. So do I, and most of us. That is why Discord is the lifeboat - a good place to keep in touch and sort this out while the real-deal replacement is being built. Replacement you say?
Oppo 2: 100% less Kinja
Oh yes. I’ve seen a lot of posts throwing out oppositelock.com this morning, but figured I’d give as much of the story as I’ve gathered for anyone just tuning in: Brian, the life of purchased oppositelock.com some time ago for just this reason.
Of course, having a domain name is not the same as a full fledged blogging platform we can actually use. If you go to URL right now, what you see is a blog site with a test post or two. This is not the working replacement. I am throwing that out because in the heat of things this morning I saw a few people complain that they couldn’t create an account/log in.
While Brian has the domain, Nick has an Exxocet and at least one other oppo have been working at setting up a wordpress based blog that mimics the look and feel of Kinja (but hopefully with less bugs!). Based off what I’ve seen on the discord channels it seems to be coming along nicely, but will take some time to finish.
What does this all mean? Assuming Nick has the site all ironed out, Brian would need to allow the domain to be used for it. Hosting would need to be paid for on an ongoing basis. Many have offered to chip in for this if and/or when it happens. There’s also the potential for support by add revenue, which opens a whole other discussion. All that said, this seems like the current best solution to a permanent replacement to the oppo on kinja we know and love/hate/tolerate/?
Backing up old posts
Whether oppo ends up living forever here or not, given the uncertainty it might be a good time to back up your old posts/images. There are 2 ways I’ve seen to do that.
Option 1: less technical route - browser extension
Tripper posted a guide on doing this earlier today, but it got buried. I haven’t tried this method, but if you don’t feel comfortable setting up a Python environment than this might be your best bet.
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Option 2: Thanks Just Jeepin’
Over in the Discord channels Just Jeepin’ posted some code he wrote to scrape out text/html and images from a user’s posts. I was able to use it successfully myself this morning so I know it works. It does, however, require installing Python and using the command line. I’ll try to explain the simplest steps to getting it going.
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The link above is to the git repository for the code. If you’ve used git, then you can check out the repo that way... and if you can do that, you can probably figure out the rest of this yourself. For everybody else, read on.
On that page if you select the green ‘Clone or Download’ button you can download a .zip of the code without using git. Once that has finished you can extract it and see the following:
The readme is out of date, so ignore it. To run you will need to download Python. I downloaded version 3.8 for windows. A python environment in linux is probably more normal, but I did this in windows and it worked fine for me. The key when installing Python is this though:
Under advanced options, select ‘Add Python to environment variables’. That will make running the commands simpler.
Everything else will now be done on the command line. Clicking on the windows start menu icon and typing CMD should bring up the command prompt program.
Next I installed the required libraries used by the program. In the command prompt window type the following and hit enter:
This installs the beautifulsoup library required. I repeated this for all the libraries listed in the requirements.txt file, replacing beautifulsoup==4.8.1 with the next library
beautifulsoup4==4.8.1
bs4==0.0.1
pytz==2019.3
soupsieve==1.9.5
timestring==1.6.4
Now we’ll need to use the cd command to browse to the folder containing the kinja.py file. In the command line run the following (replacing C:\ pathToFolder with the path to the extracted folder containing kinja.py)
With that finished, we can now run the backup. To back up just text/html the command is
python kinja.py YourKinjaUsername
to back up your images, run
python kinja.py YourKinjaUsername —- images
If it’s all working right your posts/images should download into folders, one folder for each year. Keep in mind that any images shown in the text/html version are linking back to the Oppo posts, so if Oppo gets nuked then those will be lost. It’s probably worth doing the photo download as well. Hopefully that worked and you now have all your glorious oppo posts backed up for all eternity (or until your hard drive expires).
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It seems that at least for the time being, Oppo as we know it is safe. It might be permanent, or it might not. Even if it makes it through this current situation it might still go away next month or next year. While I tend to lurk and comment more then post here, I for one have really enjoyed our vaguely automotive community and will be sad if it ever goes. Knowing there is a plan to replace it is good, I just hope that we can all ride through the storm until a true, permanent, full-featured home is finished. Any time there is a migration from one platform like this to another, many users inevitably slip through the cracks and whole communities can die. I’ll find that sad if someday we are forced to move and the same thing happens. Even if we all stay on kinja for time to come, it might not hurt to be prepared. Join the Discord app and the mailing list at oppositelock.com. Back up your stuff. This is the internet and everything is always in flux. I hope what we have here can continue on no matter the format or the location.
jimz
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 13:57 |
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While Brian has the domain, Nick has an Ex xocet
That’s great and all, but how is an Exocet going to help us here?
Urambo Tauro
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 14:02 |
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I see the main page of Oppo has tag links, but would a mod be able to reinstate that “ skybox ” thing t hat was introduced a few years ago? There is a LOT of posting going on today, and it would be nice to keep important posts like this pinned to the top of Oppo’s main page instead of having multiple “so what’s the plan?” posts all pushing each other off of the front page. I just don’t want us all running off in different directions with different contingency plans.
Chariotoflove
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 14:03 |
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Thanks for the detailed post that answers many of my questions.
I’m still wondering if there is a user-friendly way to archive all of the Oppo and make it available. I know enough to know that is a tall order though.
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thejustache
> Urambo Tauro
11/04/2019 at 14:07 |
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Completely agreed. I don’t have any powers to do anything like that, but I share the fear that with so many posts and people trying to figure out where to go we could fracture without a clear path
ttyymmnn
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 14:08 |
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Re: archiving posts. Here’s what I did, and it was a pain in the ass, but I know I got everything. I opened each post and clicked EDIT, then copied and pasted the text into a Word or TextEdit document (Mac). Then I right clicked on each picture and opened in a new window. This gives the photo in its original size. Then I saved the photos to a folder with the text document. Lather rinse and repeat, about 250 times at least for all my aviation stuff. But at least I know I have it all for when I want to create my own site one day.
Thanks for this primer. I know at least one other person replied to me and asked how to find the Discord channel. It took a bit of groping on my part but I did finally find it. It doesn’t work on my Safari, though. Have to use Chrome. I assume there is a separate Discord app?
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thejustache
> Chariotoflove
11/04/2019 at 14:10 |
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Yeah, short of someone having database access I think it would be hard to do that with any sort of speed. Just Jeepin’s tool works pretty well for a user, so I suppose if you could get a list of all users you could loop through and try to download everything. That would be a whole lot of downloading though, and in the end you’d have a hard drive full of separate html and images. Not the greatest for piecing back together later
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thejustache
> ttyymmnn
11/04/2019 at 14:15 |
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I have only connected through chrome on my desktop, but I have seen people connected through their phone so I’d guess there is an app version. I’m glad you were able to archive your posts, I’ve greatly enjoyed your aviation content and hope it can continue
McMike
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 14:18 |
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ttyymmnn
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 14:18 |
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Thank you! I hope to have an outlet going forward as well. I’ll have to ask my middle schoolers how to use Discord. The use it to chat with friends while they play online.
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Chariotoflove
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 14:29 |
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I was afraid you’d say that.
sn4cktimes
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 15:20 |
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Joined the discord server for the just in case. I’m excited to see the new domain with forum eventually pop up.
SlideshowOhNO - Fixit Union, Chapter of Kinja
> thejustache
11/04/2019 at 17:14 |
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OPPO Discord?
I really appreciate the t
horough breakdown of where things stand. I logged on today to see the Titanic literally sinking. While I haven’t posted any content directly yet, I do have several notes taken for ideas and half-written projects to polish up for you fine folks. Glad to see I may have another OPPO to contribute to when the time comes. :)
Jayvincent
> jimz
11/04/2019 at 20:27 |
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I thought it when I first read it... and I still LOL’d when I read it again in your post. W ell played JimZ, at least we can laugh while the band plays on and the water rises
UserNotFound
> thejustache
11/05/2019 at 13:00 |
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Is there a place we can go, or a secret question we can ask, to get a valid Discord invite link?
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thejustache
> UserNotFound
11/05/2019 at 14:07 |
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https://discord.gg/BkV6Hy should work. I did notice it only is valid for 24 hours, which makes this post less useful for people in the future unfortunately
BvdV - The Dutch Engineer
> thejustache
11/05/2019 at 14:40 |
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To help people that don’t want to save everything in a manual way, but are not tech-savvy enough to run the python script, I’ve created an executable based on the mentioned python script. I also extended it with an option to manually select articles by their URLs.
I’m currently testing it, but when it’s done I’ll write a short post about it on Oppo
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thejustache
> BvdV - The Dutch Engineer
11/05/2019 at 14:47 |
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That’s awesome! Thank you for your work
barnie
> thejustache
11/08/2020 at 17:04 |
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Great good works, guys and in such a short time. Thank you so very much!
I’m not much for posting but am a true stuff-talker. I kinda use this place to record memories as you guys jiggle them loose. Is there a way to grab my replies to posts? (Gotta keep my lies organized somehow... :) When I grab a post, do the replies come with it?
a_blackpanther
> BvdV - The Dutch Engineer
11/09/2020 at 14:27 |
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Did you ever get this running? SOme of us are total noobs at this stuff.