Many of the UFOmind webpages have been archived on various dates by the Wayback Machine's Internet Archive. However, that archive is not easily searched. Also, many of the links do not work on most of the archived copies of each page. You have to know which version of each page to access.
Today, it is possible - with a bit of effort (following steps I've detailed below, partly because I think the same steps could be adapted to resurrect some other UFO websites...) - to use the material in the Wayback Machine's Internet Archive as a starting point but then automate replacing the dead links with working links to archived copies of most of those webpages and then also convert the material into searchable PDFs.
At least as importantly for research purposes, I have converted the webpages into a few thousand PDF documents. Once downloaded, these can all be searched in a single search using the methods I've previously outlined. For example, searching the PDF version of the website for "Lazar" generates thousands of hits (many of which link to archived copies of webpages from the 1990s which would otherwise be difficult to find) and articles from the 1990s.
For those interested in the process of creating this part of the archive (or in doing similar work on other websites), these are the steps I followed (after some experimentation and searching...).
Firstly, I used the Wayback Machine Downloader to download certain versions of archived pages of UFOmind.com as outlined below:
1) I downloaded the rubyinstaller recommended at the top of
rubyinstaller.org/downloads then run the downloaded exe file
2) downloaded the zip file
github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader/archive/… 3) unzipped the downloaded zip file
4) Used the windows start menu to search for "Start command prompt with Ruby"
5) I follow the instructions for the
github.com/hartator/wayback_machine_downloader (i.e.: copy paste this "gem install wayback_machine_downloader" into the prompt. Hit enter and it will install the program
6) Followed the "Usage" guidelines from that github page, entering commands within the same Ruby command prompt. Due to the issues I mentioned above, it was important to limit the download to the latest archived version of the UFOmind.com website up to, say, 1 January 2001 (since some webpages from this website are incomplete thereafter). This can be done by using the "to" qualifier in a relevant download command: wayback_machine_downloader http://www.ufomind.com --to 20010101
7) Found the relevant files at C:\Users\YOURusername\websites
I then followed the instructions in
my previous post regarding creating the Reality Uncovered forum archive on finding and replacing relevant parts of URLs so that at least some of the internal links work.
Since many of the links in the downloaded pages were to dead websites, it was necessary to look into replacing those links with links to archived copies of those pages. I found a helpful list of powerful
commands and options in a page on Wikipedia. In particular:
The next example links to the most current version of the archived page.
https://web.archive.org/web/http://www.wikipedia.org/Likewise, a similar archive URL but with the number 1000 links to the oldest archive copy.
https://web.archive.org/web/1000/http://www.wikipedia.org/Also, to find the archived page nearest 1 January 1996 it is possible to include 1996010151143 (i.e. 51143 after the relevant date) in the wayback machine URL, such as:
https://web.archive.org/web/1996010151143/http://www.ufobbs.com/txt3/2675.ufo
It is then possible to use the free Bulk Rename Utility to replace relevant links in all of the thousands of html files in the archive. In particular, it was desirable to replace:
(1) existing links to other parts of the website with working links to the new archived copy that I have uploaded
(2) existing links to other websites (most of which have died in the 25 years or more years since the UFO Minds pages were written, i.e. in about 1993-1996) with links to archived copies of those websites in the Internet Archive.
STEP 1 : Replace absolute links to material on other parts of the website with relative links
I wanted to replace HREF=http://www.ufomind.com/ with HREF=/
For example:
The Internet Archive copy includes this link:
HREF=http://www.ufomind.com/area51/people/lazar/
This step replaces such a link with the following (which, among other things, eliminates the www and thus results in all the remaining references to www being to other websites - ready for step 2):
HREF=/area51/people/lazar/
To do this, in Notepad++, under the Search menu, select Find then click on the Find in Files tab and tick the box for “Normal”, and then replace HREF=http://www.ufomind.com/ with HREF=/ and click on the Replace in Files button
(This replaced 15,187 links).
STEP 2 : Replace absolute links to other websites with links to archived webpages
Linking to the most recent copy of a webpage written in 1996 generally result in an archived error page or a page seeking to sell a defunct website. This is, um, not particularly useful.
Linking to the oldest archived copy of a webpage is generally useful.
It is possible to link to the oldest archived copy of a webpage in the Wayback Machine's archive by including "1000" in the date part of the Wayback Machine URL - such as the following:
https://web.archive.org/web/1000/http://www.ufobbs.com/txt3/2675.ufo
However, webpages may have been updated and it would be a shame to miss out on any significant updates. I think there is a more productive way forward.
Since Glenn Campbell stopped updated most pages on UFO Mind in or around 1996, many of the links were updated up to about 1995/1996. One trick that can be done on the Wayback Machine's Internet Archive which I haven't seen others mention is to add "51143" after a date in the URL to find the archived copy of that webpage nearest to the specified date. So, if you are looking for a copy near 1 January 1996 it is possible to include 1996010151143 in the wayback machine URL, such as:
https://web.archive.org/web/1996010151143/http://www.ufobbs.com/txt3/2675.ufo
Although there is no snapshot of that webpage archived on 1 January 1996, that link is automatically redirected to the nearest archived copy of that webpage - which was taken a few months later:
https://web.archive.org/web/19970227161539/http://www.ufobbs.com/txt3/2675.ufo
When using the Wayback Machine, links on archived pages seem to use that 51143 trick as the default position (e.g. links on a page from 1 January 1996 will link to a copy of the relevant link archived nearest to 1 January 1996). This seems like the best option here as well.
So, I have replaced links in the UFOmind webpages with links to the Wayback Machine's archived nearest to 1 January 1996 using that 51143 trick.
I wanted to replace HREF=http:// with HREF=https://web.archive.org/web/1996010151143/http://
So, for example:
The Internet Archive copy includes this link:
HREF=http://www.ufobbs.com/txt3/2675.ufo
This step replaces such a link with the following (which, among other things, eliminates the www and thus results in all the remaining references to www being to other websites - ready for step 2):
HREF=https://web.archive.org/web/1996010151143/http://www.ufobbs.com/txt3/2675.ufo
In Notepad++, under the Search menu select Find then “Normal”, and then replace HREF=http:// with HREF=https://web.archive.org/web/1996010151143/http://
(This replaced 144,175 links).
STEP 3 : Replace most relative links to other parts of the website with new absolute links
So that the links in the new online archive work, the next step is to replace HREF=/ with HREF=https://files.afu.se/Downloads/Websites/www.ufomind.com/html/
In Notepad++, under the Search menu select Find then “Normal”, and then replace HREF=/ with HREF=https://files.afu.se/Downloads/Websites/www.ufomind.com/html/
(This replaced 414,687 links).
Unfortunately, it seems some of the relative links have not been replaced - which creates a problem with some links in the the PDF version referred to below. I'll try to resolve this problem, but I'm just a lawyer so some of the more technical issues are a bit beyond me.
STEP 4 : Fine tuning specific sets of links
It looks like Glenn Campbell originally had various pages within the ufo/people folder that were moved to the more general /people folder, but the links were not updated and thus ceased to work.
This means that most of the links on the UFOmind website to pages about ufologists don't work in the original version.
I've done a replace of www.ufomind.com/html/ufo/people/ with www.ufomind.com/html/people/
(This replaced 868 links)
STEP 5 : Conversion to PDFs
I have used Adobe Acrobat's batch create file option to convert the html files into searchable PDFs.
Unfortunately, this seems to involve relative links in the html being translated into absolute links (which link to the directory on my hard drive containing the html files). I have eliminated most relative links (as outlined above) but a few seem to remain. I'll try to work out why and eliminate those ones as well, but I'm just a lawyer so have nearly reached the limits of my technical ability in achieving the current imperfect results (but at least most of the links now work and the material is searchable).
