If PW doesn't stay profitable and shuts down, I don't want the history of my piano search to disappear! I could manually copy and paste the thread but am wondering if there's an easier way to export it for my own records.

@navindra

    I too am concerned about the historic posts being lost forever, but more so from people like Del. To this day, I am still finding answers to some of my questions, in his old posts.

      twocats If it's a single thread, look in the top left corner and choose the "Print Thread" option:

      This puts the entire thread in one page, so you can easily save it in one shot.

      I wrote a Python script that saved all my posts from PianoWorld to a spreadsheet. It's a little rough around the corners, but if there's interest in it, I could put the script on GitHub. Unfortunately, if you're not familiar with running scripts, it will not be very user-friendly at all.

      I had initially toyed with the idea of writing a browser extension to do the job — that might have been easier for general use.

      amathusiast Indeed, there's a treasure trove of information on PW. I guess that's what made it an attractive buy.

      I feel quite fine downloading my own content, but I would definitely be pushing my luck if I attempted to mirror the whole of PW!

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      Beach L168, Wish, baCh, WOW Petrof, Fake Steinway, VS
      TIME

            navindra thank you! My main piano search thread is now something like 17 pages, so the ability to print in one go is really great 🙂

            I do have experience running (and writing) scripts but only in Unix, and right now I only have access to Windows. If it's not that hard for a technically savvy (but not terribly motivated) person I'd give it a try 😂

                twocats Awesome!

                I hunted around quite a bit and found various interesting things like that Print Threat option that made my life easier when writing that script.

                twocats I do have experience running (and writing) scripts but only in Unix, and right now I only have access to Windows.

                Wonderful. Then you will have no problem at all. Python was born on Unix but works everywhere. I'll see about sharing the script... might take me a few days to get to it.

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                Beach L168, Wish, baCh, WOW Petrof, Fake Steinway, VS
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                      navindra Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure what the best solution is. Can we coerce the WayBack Machine to archive the old threads and make them searchable? As we've seen from some of the comments at the PW forum about the initial seeding of content here, it's probably not something that can or should be done.

                      By the way, thanks for setting this forum up. I didn't post much before, but as a regular reader, I am interested in seeing the community continue to thrive.

                          navindra I'll see about sharing the script... might take me a few days to get to it.

                          No rush, I'm not sure when I'd get around to looking at it anyway!! Thank you for sharing your work 😊

                            Being too lazy to look into it myself, you might want to see if httrack or wget would get you where you want to go.

                            --
                            If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!

                              FrankCox hah, I am too lazy to look into it too. If someone hands me a solution I'll probably use it, but otherwise I'll probably print a few of my threads from PW to a PDF for my own records.

                                FrankCox Thinking about it more, you are right.

                                A combination of wget with "Print Thread" will serve better here. HTML should be fine, doesn't even need to be PDF as you can still read it in a browser.

                                When I wrote the original script to pull my data from Piano World, I had to be very careful to pull down my content alone. For archival and reference purposes, that doesn't really serve well though.

                                amathusiast Can we coerce the WayBack Machine to archive the old threads and make them searchable? As we've seen from some of the comments at the PW forum about the initial seeding of content here, it's probably not something that can or should be done.

                                I definitely wish we could get Piano World on archive.org. I'm not sure what is preventing it actually.

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                                Beach L168, Wish, baCh, WOW Petrof, Fake Steinway, VS
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                                    FrankCox Wow! What a great tip!

                                    I just saved a thread there:
                                    https://web.archive.org/web/20240519214905/https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/printthread/Board/1/main/220045/type/thread.html
                                    https://web.archive.org/web/20240519215508/https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3294311/estonia-model-l168-hands-on.html

                                    This gives me ideas... I wish I'd known about this sooner. 😃

                                    This is amazing really, perhaps we can archive and index the more interesting threads from PW now. 😃

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                                    Beach L168, Wish, baCh, WOW Petrof, Fake Steinway, VS
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                                      twocats I was looking around PW and I was surprised to see that one of your threads is at the very top in terms of number of replies and number of visits in the Piano Forum.

                                      There's now an archive of it in print format here:
                                      https://web.archive.org/web/https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/printthread/Board/1/main/163735/type/thread.html

                                      Wow: You met Heather and Darrell Fandrich! I only got the chance to meet Heather as Darrell had already passed.

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                                      Beach L168, Wish, baCh, WOW Petrof, Fake Steinway, VS
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                                          navindra

                                          navindra I was looking around PW and I was surprised to see that one of your threads is at the very top in terms of number of replies and number of visits in the Piano Forum.

                                          Wow, really?? I guess it's because I won't let the thread die 😂 I wanted all my progress updates in one place and am still working on getting my piano to it's "finished" state. It's pretty close, after quite a lot of work and expense. Now we're just repeatedly voicing down the new hammers.

                                          Heather and Darrell were lovely! I was sorry to hear that he passed away.

                                          Thank you for archiving the thread for me!