I've been missing the Story Games material - so often, it's incredibly helpful to find advice there on beloved story games of yore.
It's not obvious for someone not supremely technologically savvy to access them, but it IS possible.
Here's the easiest way I know. I'll share it here for posterity:
1. First, determine the number of the thread.
If you have a link saved or bookmarked, it's the number embedded in the URL. If not, look at this list:
http://bemurkled.ca/storygamesindex.txt
(With thanks to Billy, for putting this list together! Absolutely invaluable.)
Here's an example:
From a URL or bookmark -
http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/20134/pocket-danger-patrol-playset-need-help
The number here is "20134".
From Billy's archive of thread titles -
7442. Jason_Morningstar - Tell Me About Tunnels and Trolls (2008-08-26)
The number here is "7442".
2. Second, copy and paste the following line into your browser, replacing the "XXXX" with the thread's number.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/XXXX*
(Be sure to include the "*" at the end of the line! That's not a typo.)
For example, if your thread number is 7442, then paste this into your browser:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/7442*
I made it even simpler for you. :)
https://rickard80.github.io/storygames/
One day I will format the list so it looks nicer.
Thanks, Rickard!
This is a lovely gift to the community. There's so much good material there.
If there was a way, someday, to make it easily searchable as well, we'd have all we need.
Incredible work! I'm deeply grateful.
That's it. That's the tweet.
I don't think it's possible with the current solution (hosting on Github), but if someone uploaded everything on a site and submitted it to Google to index the files (instead of waiting for their bots to find them), it would be possible to google the site. That would be the easiest solution without having host a database or write a free text search program on a server (which would be easy enough).
I did an update so it's possible to direct link to specific posts, and also to traverse to the previous/next threads by using the (new) number input at the bottom of the screen.
Thank you, again.
I am really enjoying the linked archive you have set up.
However, there is a very strange feature here:
When I navigate to the landing page, it always loads the last thread I have been looking at. It's very frustrating, and makes it almost unusable (since returning to the landing page just loads the last-viewed thread again).
Any idea what's going on there? I'm a Chrome user.
I've been doing some updates. Got some of the links to actually link to other threads, and you can click on the date under the user name to actually get a direct link to that post. Also, the list on the landing page have gotten a touch up.
Probably something that went wrong in those updates. I'm mostly on Firefox, sometimes checking in with Chrome now and then.
Try again, and the problem persists, reload without cache (SHIFT+F5, CMD+SHIFT+R, CTRL+SHIFT+R).
Very helpful.
Of course, as these things go... now that I'm trying to use it again, the problem is nowhere to be seen. But, if it appears again, I will let you know!
Well, that's because I did an update removing the behavior that the page loads the last page you visited. :) I thought it was useful, but I guess it became one of these "UX designer overthinks the design". :)
Just hoping I can reveal a big thing soon. Waiting for Google, but I don't know if it will work.
I lacked the working links. It's a brilliant feature.
I am supposing you made a script that hacks the url to re-direct it. So is this all an interface to read the archived pages ? And if so, can you tell me where I can repay you for all the work time you saved me?
Yeah, it's an interface based on Jeff Schecter's archive of Story Games. I just fetch the correct post, and—while I at it—I parse the file to see if there are any links that I can redirect. I can't fix links that point directly to a message - I would need to build a script that builds an enormous database for that to work.
I also use basic CSS to hide some elements. So it's the same file as the archive, just displayed differently.
---
It took me about 1-2 hours to get it all to working, and I suppose I put around 8 hours of work in it now. It's mostly learning more about the "hosting site" Github and its functionalities, which is a fun learning experience. :)
I've come to a point where I can optimize, so I did an update where I could cut off 1Mb of the file size (from 3 to 2), the internal (working) links are optimized, the page demands less RAM while scripting execution time is down to a minimum at page load (from ~140 ms to 6 ms).
... and last, but not least, you can open all links on the landing page in new tabs!
Love bombing.
I happened to be googling something Story-Games related and noticed Jeph's archive coming up. So I tried another search, and sure enough, it looks like the Google indexing worked!
Is there any way to get results from that archive more easily/reliably? (Since a search with less particular terms than "vast agharta" isn't likely to find hits from that archive.)
Some kind of Google search trick?
Trying some more, I think I spoke too soon... It looks like it's only working for the small number of pages that we have linked to here!
@Paul_T It's really not heavy and many free softwares can search it.
@Webtech If I unpacked all the files on a site for Google to index them, would I still be within James Stuart's will for the forums ? Also, I think there would be a IntProp infringement, right ?
I submitted a validated sitemap 20 days ago on Google Search Console, and it didn't seem to work. I now submitted two different kinds of sitemaps, and trying index a massive link page. It takes about 2-4 weeks for anything to happen.
I also moved the pages from www.erebaltor.se over to https://rickard80.github.io/storygames/ when I made the sitemap.