It's 2023...Is there no longer a Digital Press online Rarity Guide?

[digitaldoofus]

It's 2023...Is there no longer a Digital Press online Rarity Guide? If there is...do you have a link?

[Greg2600]

Supposed to be here.

http://www.digitpress.com/video-game-guide/

[Gameguy]

The guide hasn't been working for at least several months if not longer, I noticed it missing back in June and mentioned it in another thread. An official explanation has been given by Nz17. I'm still surprised that there were no backups made for the guide besides 6+ year old ones.


Our Web host, DreamHost, nuked the Rarity Guide and Room of Doom for some unexplained reason between January and March of this year. 10,000+ photos gone. Data lost. Users disenfranchised. I'm still angry. The site will move one day for these reasons and more. Sadly, the only database backups were 6-7 years old, so they didn't contain more recent info.

Of course, that still doesn't fully make sense as the guide info is still available online, it's really the search feature on the main landing page that's inaccessible. It took awhile for me to figure this out. As as example, I can still search for specific systems as long as I have the direct link to that search, like the Commodore 64 with each game entry still accessible.

http://www.digitpress.com/video-game-guide/?system%5B%5D=3676&mode=Search&title=&dollars_loose=&dollars_complete=&scarcity_loose=&scarcity_complete=&Designer=&Developer=&Mfr=&PartNo=&Released=

I wish I had direct links to each system but I don't. Others can be found with some experimentation. I found the ColecoVision guide as well.

http://www.digitpress.com/video-game-guide/?system%5B%5D=3675&mode=Search&title=&dollars_loose=&dollars_complete=&scarcity_loose=&scarcity_complete=&Designer=&Developer=&Mfr=&PartNo=&Released=

It still would be nice for the landing page to be fixed so the guide can be searchable again. Or just revert back to using PDFs for the guide, with rarity and pricing included.

[Greg2600]

Why wouldn't he just use the 6-7 year old backups? Nobody has touched the Guide in eons.

[Gameguy]

I don't know why the old info wouldn't be used, that would make the most sense since the rarity info is pretty much the same. There still has to be more to it as the info couldn't have just been all nuked by the web host, if that happened then I shouldn't be able to still access the info with direct links, yet I can do that. I can alter the web address to find other systems, but it's all trial and error as the systems are designated by numbers. The info is still somehow there, it's just not searchable currently.

[Gametrek]

Well you could "scrape" Digitpress archive for the guide. How does that work? Well searching via regular means will only yield pages but using various scraping methods from commands, applets, you could retrieve the entire content of pages despite date.

A great example is how archive.org literally announced/thanks Deviant Art for all the content it provided.
If Digitpress did not use Robot.txt at anypoint on that specific page then the database content literally could be sitting in limbo.

You might need some programmer assitance to help you with this. Literally via Powershell, some alternative windows applications, java, or even linux apps you could scrap for the content ( data-base ) your looking for. Especially if it was txt files and folders. The only problem I find is that archive might not store the login data, so otherwise would be a problem. To access a page content without doing a log in.

For alternative hosting solution 1&1 seems okay especially if you could get it on a server
not in the US. Same with Geocities ( which is free with 20MB limit
). Dreamhost nightmares are not new from my understanding. Again it is the not the hardware that makes something suck it is the people behind the hardware.

[Nz17]

Online yet hobbled by DreamHost, the Online Rarity Guide will be restored by 40 days from now. FYI, we have had a contributor adding info about 3-screw versus 5-screw NES cartridges to the ORG and another contributor who added media like screenshots.

My PC has been broken since March so my typing, site work, and posting have been slow, incomplete about details, and infrequent. Sorry about that. This has also been an expensive and very difficult personal year.

Thank you for your patience. Things will start improving.

However, the video game console "complete" check list PDF's have been online at this site for decades at http://www.digitpress.com/lists/ so please share this fact.

Sometime next year, at least part of the DP Web site should be moving away from DreamHost to Amazon Web Services - which is probably superior in all ways. Look forward to then.

You will read more from me soon-ish. Until then!

[Niku-Sama]

Online yet hobbled by DreamHost, the Online Rarity Guide will be restored by 40 days from now. FYI, we have had a contributor adding info about 3-screw versus 5-screw NES cartridges to the ORG and another contributor who added media like screenshots.

My PC has been broken since March so my typing, site work, and posting have been slow, incomplete about details, and infrequent. Sorry about that. This has also been an expensive and very difficult personal year.

Thank you for your patience. Things will start improving.

However, the video game console "complete" check list PDF's have been online at this site for decades at http://www.digitpress.com/lists/ so please share this fact.

Sometime next year, at least part of the DP Web site should be moving away from DreamHost to Amazon Web Services - which is probably superior in all ways. Look forward to then.

You will read more from me soon-ish. Until then!

Ah man i coulda hooked you up with some PC hardware if i knew about this, i just gave it all away to a friend of mine
Well give us a heads up for the move and thanks for keeping us going here!

[Greg2600]

Online yet hobbled by DreamHost, the Online Rarity Guide will be restored by 40 days from now. FYI, we have had a contributor adding info about 3-screw versus 5-screw NES cartridges to the ORG and another contributor who added media like screenshots.

My PC has been broken since March so my typing, site work, and posting have been slow, incomplete about details, and infrequent. Sorry about that. This has also been an expensive and very difficult personal year.

Thank you for your patience. Things will start improving.

However, the video game console "complete" check list PDF's have been online at this site for decades at http://www.digitpress.com/lists/ so please share this fact.

Sometime next year, at least part of the DP Web site should be moving away from DreamHost to Amazon Web Services - which is probably superior in all ways. Look forward to then.

You will read more from me soon-ish. Until then!

By the way I saw Joe S the other day, he was going to let you know that he has backups to whatever you're probably looking for.

[fergojisan]

Thank you for this!

[Nz17]

Fix arriving this month - stay tuned!

[Nz17]

DreamHost mangled the site's originals and backups of the Guide's files. I have found my backups and my backups' backups at my semi-dysfunctional PC. Now to determine what DreamHost changed to determine how to fix things. The Guide should be good and functional again during this month or at most, February.

[Gameguy]

I went to check the rarity guide to look up some rarity values on some SNES games and found the search feature still inaccessible, I forgot that it was offline until I came across that issue again. This feels like the longest Febtober ever for whatever reason.

[fahlim003]

DreamHost mangled the site's originals and backups of the Guide's files. I have found my backups and my backups' backups at my semi-dysfunctional PC. Now to determine what DreamHost changed to determine how to fix things. The Guide should be good and functional again during this month or at most, February.

So, its ded then?

Its been way over a year since even I posted elsewhere as to whats going on.

[Nz17]

Thanks for the reminder! I will have news for everyone here this month.

[Nz17]

Here is your news: A work-around has been implemented! Please feel free to read the guide and have fun!

Thanks for waiting and being patient!

http://www.digitpress.com/video-game-guide/

[fahlim003]

Perhaps the craziest April Fool's post of all time... or maybe not.

Thanks for finally bringing it.