Echoes of the Past - Old CU Forum Topics

[haloman30 168]

Hey, everyone! We've got a bit of a strange update today - one that may cause you to question my sanity and patience.

 

As most of you know, while our archives of Nuclear District are fairly complete, with each and every topic from the ND forums perfectly preserved here within the CU forums - our archives of the old Chaotic United are... lacking.

 

This isn't due to any fault of myself or anyone who's been around since 2015 - unfortunately, this is one of those cases where seemingly nobody kept backups after the old CU shut down. While I do still hold out hope that someday, some grand hero will show up with a complete backup of the webserver from back then - it's not something that I realistically expect after this many years.

 

However, that isn't to say that nothing remains of the old CU. Of course, most of the forums themes are still around and even ported to IPB 4.x (though many do need some upkeep to get back to looking proper), and a few spawns are still around. There's also a fair bit of YouTube content out there (much of which I've downloaded locally just in case). Today, however, revolves around the Wayback Machine.

 

For those unfamiliar with it, the Wayback Machine is a site that allows you to view old versions of numerous websites. It's a remarkable and honorable project, and in many ways does what it sets out to do. However, it's not perfect.

 

The way it archives pages is through the use of bots which will "crawl" the pages - effectively finding links to them, and then finding links to other pages. However, unless a site is quite popular (and sometimes even then), the pages that get archived are usually not everything that's available. This often isn't an issue on plain static websites that don't change often. But in cases like, say, a forum on a gaming community's website, this can result in a lot of pages being missed.

 

The other issue is that what is saved is only what the end user sees. In other words, you can't sign in to the old CU forums on Wayback Machine. There's no functionality behind the page - what you see in front of you on the page is all that is saved. Nothing more, nothing less. This of course means that any subforums, pages, or topics which weren't visible to guests back then would've never had a chance to get saved.

 

The end result of all this is that, without a copy of the of the old CU forums database, the old topics from back then are simply gone - and all that remains is what can be found on Wayback Machine.

 

So, in a moment of sheer insanity, I said "you know what? fuck it" - and began to painstakingly copy every topic and post from chaoticunited.com on Wayback Machine and bring it into the current forums.

 

This was an entirely manual process. Every topic title, the content of each post, and the author and date/time of each post had to be set manually. Needless to say, this took a lot of time. But, as of now, what you could (and still can) find on Wayback Machine has been brought into the forums. Great care was taken to ensure that any goofy formatting from the original posts was preserved, while also updating any links and embeds to ensure that any images are hosted here on the CU webserver rather than on archive.org. Any old quotes or spoilers were re-set using the modern spoilers and quotes to ensure that they work as expected. The goal was to have the topics be just as usable as if they were posted here in the first place. And I think that, considering what was available, the end result is pretty good.

 

Any posts or topics made by users who have created new forum accounts have had their old posts attached to their account, and so that old content will actually count towards your content count. Any content posted by users without accounts will show as "Guest <name>", where <name> is replaced with the user's name - just like how old ND forum topics display.

 

The full list of changes made to each post/topic include:

• All embedded images have been pasted in as attachments to ensure that they are hosted on the CU webserver
• All emoticons use their modern matches. Any emoticons which are not available will show the name instead
• Any embedded YouTube videos have been re-embedded to use the modern embed
• Any posts or topics created by users who have a current forums account have had the topics/posts attached to their account, and counted towards total content count
• Quotes have been re-quoted to use the standard quote format (ensures quotes properly refer back to the real posts)

 

The users who have had content re-linked to their account (as of 3-8-2022) is as follows:

• Kendev
• Atomicbeast101
• stickman147147
• AlexZH
• haloman30
• alycat
• SilentEnderGirl
• Falkerz
• lisathekitten
• CeaseToExist
• stoneharry
• rapatupatupa
• mikestardust
• Jamplifier
• Guitar (also linked some old ND topics)
• Delta357/newdelta (also linked some old ND topics)
• esponshadow1

 

If you find yourself in one of those old posts and it isn't attached to your account, feel free to let me know and I'll get that fixed right up.

 

Additionally, through the process, we've found a few more former staff members who were never listed on the credits page. These users will be shown on the credits page once we launch the redesigned About area (which includes a brand-new credits page). The new users on the credits page include:

• Elinora (WoW Developer)
• Crumpets (WoW Developer)
• Serbs5246 (Runescape Mod)
• Dishonestorc9 (Helper)
• Shadow6316 (Helper)
• Orcy (Helper)
• Agentkronus (Helper)
• thehustlah (Runescape Mod)
• Slug (Helper)
• Jamplifier (Helper)
• CeaseToExist - helper
• Nutella (RSPS Developer)
• Avery (WoW Developer)
• Aveoakview (Helper)

 

All of the old topics have been placed in the categories they were originally posted in back then. However, if you don't feel like searching around, the links to each topic can be found below:

 

 

And that pretty much wraps things up. Enjoy the nostalgia trip, folks!

 

~The ChaoticUnited Staff