Broken links galore...

[wolfy]

Dear all,

now this is getting really annoying...

It is no wonder that the same questions are asked over and over again - if one succeeds in finding a promising thread, his or her hopes are shattered as soon as there are links to other/older threads, because most of the time the main page is shown instead (mind that all examples are taken from the A780 forums, because that is my device!):

As it seems, the URL scheme has changed some time ago, and now nearly all of these links are broken.
Sometimes (alas very seldom) the old links are changed automatically, e.g.:

The old URL
http://www.motorolafans.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1521
gets changed to
http://www.motorolafans.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=1391

Unfortunately, this is not true for the majority of other (even older?) URLs, like (note the "index.php"-part):

http://www.motorolafans.com/index.ph...wnload&id=2026

or

http://www.motorolafans.com/index.ph...ewtopic&t=2084

which both just lead to the main page without error indication.
Perhaps theoretically these could be retrieved by changing the URL to the new scheme by hand, but this does not work because the topic IDs have changed as well (see above!)

This is especially annoying in sticky threads, which are meant as a sort of knowledge base for users seeking answers for frequent problems.

Even more cumbersome however are the promising-looking links to a non-existent wiki, e.g.:

http://www.motorolafans.com/componen.../Motorola_A780

So far I could not find any trace of a wiki on the site - but it seems that it did contain a wealth of valuable information!

A great part of the information on such forum sites lies in the links to already resolved issues - so please, dear site admins, make this work (if at all possible).

BTW, yet another problem are the many out-of-date download links (e.g. to rapidshare etc.), but this is quite understandable, as links on sharing sites are frequently cleaned up or removed because of inactivity.
But perhaps there could either be a dedicated file sharing space on motorolafans.com or some sort of central repository for such links, which is cleaned up and updated from time to time. Any ideas on this?


### UPDATE ###
And one more thing... from time to time, when I'm trying to use the search box, I get this:
----
Not Found

The requested URL /search.php was not found on this server.
---
Now that's really interesting...

### UPDATE 2 ###
Still another version of crippled links (also taken out of a forum post):

http://www.www.motorolafans.com/inde...=rc.d&start=15

This yields an error in the browser - note the double "www.www." at the beginning...
Removing one superfluous "www." does not change a lot though, courtesy of the aforementioned URL scheme changes.

Is no one else experiencing these problems?

[swifty]

Is no one else experiencing these problems?

you are not alone.
these broken links are caused from 'serval' forum-software changes in the past.

btw.
you have not found the real old ones like:
http://www.rcsc.sisrs.com/mfc/

http://web.archive.org/web/200502170...sisrs.com/mfc/

[wolfy]

you are not alone.
these broken links are caused from serval forum-software changes in the past.

Well... but isn't anyone going to do something about that?

The question is what good the change of forum software was then - it might look better, even basically function better, but vast parts of the forums are not really useful that way, all the infos that were already there are partly lost and have to be discussed all over again (which annoys the hell out of the regulars, I suppose - you can't just tell "go RTFM" to newbies that way...).

It might not even be possible to restore the links between posts now (although a good migration path should've catered for this), but what about the Wiki? It can't just have disappeared, there must be backups and the info should be just put back where it was under the same paths (or even new ones, if that's impossible).

It's a crying shame if all this information that willing people have put together in years is lost just like this because of a forum software change...

Do you have good contacts to the forum admins who might be able to solve those problems, or whom can I contact otherwise?

btw.
you have not found the real old ones like:
http://www.rcsc.sisrs.com/mfc/

http://web.archive.org/web/200502170...sisrs.com/mfc/

What, are these other forums or resources which do not exist anymore?

[admin]

Thanks for the heads up. I will look into this matter. But I'd be glad if someone with this knowledge will help me out, i'll provide all infos needed to do all that.

[ndpndnt16]

guys sorry i think i cant help anymore...im working now and i dont have time to put on the site..maybe if i got some free time...ill help...

[admin]

wolfy: Sorry I'm just able to go through everything that you supplied, and I realised a few things.

Because this site did not start out as a professional site from the beginning, there are many threads that are not able to link back. We went through many systems from the start. rcsc.sisrs.com was our oldest link, when we did not even have a domain, motorolafans.com

MotoWiki, was an old component on Joomla cms, which we are trying to port over to this bulletin with some tiny problems. We will try to solve this as soon as possible.

Thanks for the patience =)

[swifty]

http://www.motorolafans.com/index.ph...wnload&id=2026

or

http://www.motorolafans.com/index.ph...ewtopic&t=2084

which both just lead to the main page without error indication.

Still another version of crippled links (also taken out of a forum post):
http://www.www.motorolafans.com/inde...=rc.d&start=15

all three can be repaired now!

http://www.motorolafans.com/forums/download.php?id=2026
and the second one gets converted to:
http://www.motorolafans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1913
and the last link i got with a bit searching and trial and error this:
http://www.motorolafans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=469&highlight=rc.d&page=2
the highlighting is not working, i dont know why :-(

using this guide:
HowTo make a nonworking link working - MotorolaFans.com Forums

as you can see, the wiki is partial back again
if you find dead links that can not be repaired with the Wiki guide, feel free to post them here.
we will do our best to get them back!