Before BeastForum shut down in 2019, some friends and I put our heads together and constructed some tools to download an archive of the forum, including all of its posts and files, before the forum could shut down. We were mostly successful. Except for a couple of very large threads that crashed the forum every time we tried to access them, we were able to download basically everything. Over 235,000 topics, 9.5 million posts, and over 1 TB of files.
For the last few years, we've been working to build an archive of the site that you could download and browse offline. We're nearly done. The only problem is the size. Finding somewhere to host downloads of something this large is difficult, especially when you don't want it to be traced back to you, which we don't. We're eager to share this with you all, it's just hard to make it happen.
So I have a few questions for you:
1. Does anyone have specific ideas on how I could make this available? We have web hosting space for the files, but we'd rather not distribute them directly from there. Please feel free to PM me if you'd like to discuss this in private.
2. Are there any specific subforums or topics that some of you are particularly interested in? If there's enough interest, I might be able to make some of those available ahead of the full archive.
And if you have any questions for us about this project, feel free to ask. We'll do our best to answer.
For the last few years, we've been working to build an archive of the site that you could download and browse offline. We're nearly done. The only problem is the size. Finding somewhere to host downloads of something this large is difficult, especially when you don't want it to be traced back to you, which we don't. We're eager to share this with you all, it's just hard to make it happen.
So I have a few questions for you:
1. Does anyone have specific ideas on how I could make this available? We have web hosting space for the files, but we'd rather not distribute them directly from there. Please feel free to PM me if you'd like to discuss this in private.
2. Are there any specific subforums or topics that some of you are particularly interested in? If there's enough interest, I might be able to make some of those available ahead of the full archive.
And if you have any questions for us about this project, feel free to ask. We'll do our best to answer.