#datahoarding

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Converted and downloaded a bunch of YouTube videos on at-risk topics, such as gender studies, Black history (just in the US and Europe so far), LGBT history (same regions), interviews with Holocaust survivors, as well as audio and music videos by queer artists.

[reseptivaras]

all of this is great but relying on neocities or dreamwidth or tumblr or any service to stay up (and free!) is not ideal

save the media and information you care about, take backups (ideally have an "off site" copy, at a parents / friends house)

also, if anyone wants to learn how to make their own website (for fanfic archival or any reason), feel free to ask me. either here on tumblr or @reisir on discord.

kind of a tangent but, i have also made a script that downloads every youtube video you like. because the internet does forget. i won't.

How To Make Your Own Fanfiction Archive, In Just Ten Easy Steps

As the go-to "person who knows about AO3" for quite a few people who read fanfic but aren't really linked-in to wider fandom culture, I've fielded a lot of questions about how to do certain things on AO3 to which my best answer is "you should really start your own archive!" I think, in general, more fans starting their own small archives would be a net good for fandom. AO3 was never meant to be the only archive for all fandom, or even the main archive, and the more spread out and backed up we are the more resilient we are.

But of course I have to be reminded that a lot of fans these days don't really have any idea how little "you should start your own archive!" really involves. (Also, that I should practice what I preach.) So I am now making my own fanfiction archive, and writing up this post as I do it to tell people how to make theirs!

Go to https://neocities.org/ and sign up for an account. It only needs a username (which will also be your website address), password, and email. Pick a username that will be related to your archive's title!

Choose the free account option (if you ever need more than what the free account offers for a text-only archive, you should probably look into graduating from neocities.) This should take you to a menu of "how to make a website" tutorials. You should do them! They're useful skills. But let's get your archive running first.

Hit the big red Edit Site button, or open the menu under your username and select "Edit Site".

Select the "Index.html" file to edit. You're now in an HTML Editor. Congrats, you're a web developer c. 1999!

Find where it has text between the < title> tags. Delete the filler text, and put in the title of your new archive. This text will be what shows on the tab when people go to your archive.

Find where it has text between the < h1 > tags. This will be big header text at the top of your page. Put the title of your archive here again. If you have no experience with HTML, you should read over the other sample text. It covers the basic basics very well! Once you've done that, you can delete everything else between the < /h1> tag and the < /body> tag. Save your index.html file.

Get an HTML file for a fanfic you would like to add to your archive. If it's on AO3, you can use the html download option built into AO3. If you have it as a word processor/google docs file, you should have the option to save as an html file. Save that html file to your computer.

Go back to Edit Site on Neocities and go to "upload". Find the html file you saved and upload it. (You can also drag and drop files to upload.)

The file you uploaded should now be showing with your other neocities files. Right-click on the title and select "copy link".

Go in to edit index.html again. Under where you put your header text, type < br> < a href=" . Then paste in the link you copied. Then type "> Then put in the title of the fic. Then type < /a> . Then save the index page again when you're done. You can do this for every fanfic you have.

Congratulations! You now have your very own personal private fanfiction archive that you are 100% in charge of and make all the rules for. It's at least as good as half the ones I was reading on when I started reading fanfiction and will serve its function well as a way to let people read your fic. You can link to it from anywhere you want! (Including your AO3 profile.)

Blogpost version, with FAQs and discussion

Anyway, here's my beautiful new fanfiction archive made using this tutorial:

Melannen's Fanfiction Archive

(I am honestly way more disproportionately proud of finally making that than I expected to be. It's nice to have your own archive.)

If you make one, share it here ! I want to see!

[destructix]

never thought i'd say this but i gotta use reddit more often. incredibly resourceful and helpful ppl over there

[frankierohugejorts]

is anyone here good with computers?

hey guys, so ever since jude died i've been trying to sorting thru his socials and stuff, and ive been trying to like. see if i can archive some of his stuff, especially pictures and videos of him

ive been trying to do this on tumblr, but bc his privacy settings are set to 'hide from ppl without an account' i cannot use an original post finder tool and i can't even access his /archive page, and trying to scroll thru his blog manually is almost impossible bc eventually the site reloads and sends me back to the beginning, and changing the page number in the url manually does nothing, so i cant even find my place again

ive been looking into those webpage archiver tools, (like tumblthree i think?) but i don't understand enough about computers to know how to run most of them im finding in places like github, and even if i did i only have access to a chromebook, so im unable to download a program, especially one that runs on windows or linux

anyway, im basically wondering if there's anyone who knows about computers who might be able to give me any sort of advice or point me in the direction of a decent archiving site or chrome addon that doesnt require any special apps and might be able to actually access jude's blog, and maybe won't give me 8 billion viruses???

[ranvwoop]

I am generally a proponent for being able to care about multiple things however every post i see fearmongering about @o3 hypothetically being Censored because What if they come for your f*nfiction is. hmm

[signeficunt]

if youtube ever goes down for good and u want to watch any of these videos again u know who to call 🤙😎

i can't believe i missed james somertons apology video 😭😭

[gay-david-tennant]

The tale of Rumpelstilzchen (rumpelstiltskin) has lost any and all meaning in our world. Ten seconds after Rumpelstilzchen tells the queen he won’t take her firstborn if she guesses his name correctly she would just call Mark Zuckerberg and would not only receive the name but also birth certificate, search history, preferences in bed, bank account details and every single password he ever used. And not only wouldn’t she find that creepy at all but she would probably congratulate Zuckerberg on his business model which ‘benefits the whole kingdom’.

[anyonghalimaw]

so. tumblr shitting itself coz capitalism demands endless constant growth that eventually becomes unsustainable huh

[pleasant-plant-x]

I FUCKING LOVE M-DISC !

I WANT PILES UPON PILES OF OPTICAL MEDIA VIRTUALY IMMUNE TO BITROT !

[elvishcynicism]

finally, a dedicated external drive just for hoarding a bunch of music :3

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Just ordered a refurbished 256 GB heavy-duty flash drive for archival and conservation purposes. Vive la revolution

[frameacloud]

As we learn about in The Enemies of Books by William Blades (which is in Gutenberg's public domain book collection because it was published in 1888), there are many ways that books can be lost to history, some of which are water, fire, and bans. The loss of destroyed libraries such as that of Alexandria are losses to all the world forever. We historians and archivists are grateful to discover any surviving copies that people secretly kept, and have no complaint if the means for that was piracy at the time, as likely it must be when a book has become illegal.

Here are some resources for the type of ebook archival projects described above:

Calibre is the free software mentioned above for organizing your collection of ebooks. Calibre's web site has a forum where you can ask questions.

Instructions for how to use a third-party plugin for Calibre to remove Digital Rights Management (DRM) from an ebook so that you can keep your own copy of it and archive it how you want.

The Trans Literature Preservation Project: A Practical Guide to Resisting Censorship. Books and media on certain topics could soon become illegal in the US. This is a guide on how to save, archive, and share those books.

The DataHoarders subreddit (and the new spin-off Dreamwidth community) are for asking questions of very experienced digital archivists. They can help with troubleshooting or figuring out how to do your archival projects.

"you should use your libby for ebooks" "you shouldn't pirate your ebooks" BITCH you can do both.

Simply borrow the ebook from libby, download it as a .ascm (drm epub thing) on your computer, then run the .ascm file through a drm remover of your choice (third-party plugins in Calibre is what to do). you can then keep the drm-free .epub and return the libby loan. Boom.

Win/win/win.

You get to keep the ebook (ALSO libby usually has high-quality files. so it's better than piracy).

You're borrowing the book from the library. They get their numbers up, you're supporting the author and your library.

You're not holding up the line.

[moyu-sy]

Once you start archiving you never stop 😍😍

[zackcharine]

I'm having Visions but idk if i'll act on them tho

[javen-tiger]

ran out of space on my 2TB drive from being a freak data hoarder 😔

[hiveswap]

Thanks!!! Saving!!

mcyt is a constantly burning library of alexandria i am so serious