Archive
 

Is it possible to compress the whole Archive of the CFD-online discussion forum ( one volume per year maybe ? ) and make it acessible via ftp? There are many good contributions and after some months/ years nobody remembers what exactly did he read. It makes surely a alot of work but it is worth. A small IT company should surely be interested and they may even press a CD. How about it? regards I.Dotsikas

Re: Archive
 

(1). CD is a good idea. It dosn't take too much space.

Re: Archive
 

It is a bit tricky since all the pages are generated automatically by a script when someone clicks on a message. I'd have to write a new script to generate a static version of the forum. It shouldn't be too difficult. I think that you can already do this yourself though - there are programs which can download a whole site and then you can browse off-line. I can see in the logs that several people do this already. If you do this please try not to do it too often and set the delay between page-loads as high as possible - it can be a bit tough on the server otherwise.

You don't need a CD to store the forum - the total size of all messages posted since the forum was opened more than a year ago is only about 7.5 megs. If you compress that it'll be around 3 megs. A CD takes 600 megs so it is a bit of an overkill. 200 years of CFD discussions on a CD would be cool though ;-) It will not be a problem to download one years of discussions over an ordinary modem line. Text is small. Within a year or so when most people have ADSL, cable-modems or ethernet connections it will not be a problem to surf directly on the archive, then you won't need to ftp anything in advance. I guess it is a bit slow with a modem today though.

Re: Archive
 

(1). There is only one reason to have cfd-online on Internet, that is to provide service to readers who are interested in CFD. (2). Since I am interested in CFD, for me, the cfd-online has served its purpose. (3). Then one begins to think, is it going to be there all the time? It is hard for all of the readers who have contributed to the forum for the last year, to think about this issue. How can we get it rolling is more important than the technical questions and answers presented. (4). CD or the like (I would say that most people are using CD now), is a practical way to make the cfd-online more independent and self-sustained. (5). The sale of CD can be used as a foundation to support the cfd-online, even with dedicated staff to do programming to serve the global readers. (6). The CD should be more valuable than a cfd program because it presents both sides of the opinions to the cfd readers. It is not just an idea. I think, it is a cfd survival kit. (a UNI-BALL rollerball pen costs $1.50, a very good pen; a Mont Blanc rollerball pen costs $175.00, also a very good pen. The difference is UNI-BALL rollerball pen is used by more people. Thus more people are better served.)