[martin_wynne]

Dear RMwebbers,

There is now a Transfer Utility available if you are using Windows and would like to try it. It's a small program which allows all or part of an entire topic page from your Layout or Workbench topics (or any other topic) on Old RMweb to be easily transferred here to New RMweb as a single post or blog entry. Suitable formatting is applied to tidy it up, and unwanted page detail is removed.

You can see several examples here on New RMweb of posts and blog entries which have been created using the program. It's a Windows program, and in order to use it you need to be using Firefox, Opera, or a modern version of Internet Explorer as your browser for this web site. Support for Google Chrome and Safari has been announced and is expected to be available soon.

Download the program from RMweb Transfer Utility

It doesn't need to be installed as such. Just save it somewhere on your computer where you can get at it to launch it by (double-)clicking on it in the usual way. The Windows Desktop will do if you don't have a regular downloads folder. You will receive several dire warnings about executable files, which you can safely ignore.

The program is easy to use. An illustrated page of instructions is at:

http://www.templot.c...ansfer_help.htm

Please bear in mind that the images in your created post are being hot-linked from Old RMweb. Likewise the smileys are hot-linked from Old RMweb. After the page has been posted you may want to edit them out and replace them with the new smileys from here.

Have fun and please let me know (in this topic) about any problems.

The program is free to use but remains my copyright so please don't publish or distribute it anywhere. It's not in the public domain. There will be upgrades from time to time, so please check in this topic for the latest info and downloads.

regards,

Martin.

[Buckjumper]

Fantastic - what a tool, and easy as pie thanks to the step-by-step illustrated instructions.

[10800]

Martin, that's absolutely brilliant - once you've done it once following the instructions it's just a quick few mouse clicks for subsequent pages.

[martin_wynne]

Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad the Transfer Utility is proving useful.

I have upgraded it to version 2. Just delete the version 1 file, then download again:

RMweb Transfer Utility Download

Changes in version 2:

1. Fixed a bug related to links to non-image attached files (thanks to Buckjumper for finding it).

2. Comments (other members' posts) are now in a larger font. You can revert to the smaller font (as in version 1) by ticking a new box. Note that all option settings should be made before clicking button 3, changing them afterwards will have no effect -- just click button 3 again.

3. Quotes in your own posts are now in the same green colour as comments.

4. Font sizes in the preview panel should now be a closer match to the final result.

I've tried several other formatting options to give you more control, but the board software is a bit restrictive about what's possible from HTML. It got messy, so I've left it as it was. Is the green colour acceptable? Would you prefer to choose the colour?

In the next upgrade I'm hoping to get the post count to roll over automatically to the next page. At present a discussion gets chopped at the page boundary and you have to re-assemble multi-page content in the posting editor, which is a bit of a fiddle.

I'm trying keep it as simple as possible though.

regards,

Martin.

[Pete Piszczek]

martin_wynne, on 04 October 2009 - 09:44 , said:

I'm trying keep it as simple as possible though.

regards,

Martin.

Version 2 is working quite well Martin!

I'm not transferring over others comments, so I'm not really worried about fonts or colors. It's pretty easy to right click and select all, then change the font to match whatever style you'd like.

Although the profile setting for RTE has a comment beneath the radio button about which browsers to use, it is worth reminding folks, that it does not work with Google Chrome. I'd forgotten this and had a "what the ****" moment this morning...

Cheers,
Pete

[martin_wynne]

Pete Piszczek, on 04 October 2009 - 15:58 , said:

Although the profile setting for RTE has a comment beneath the radio button about which browsers to use, it is worth reminding folks, that it does not work with Google Chrome.

Hi Pete,

Thanks for that. Chrome is I believe derived from the same base as Safari, and I've just checked that it doesn't work there either, or at least not on Windows.

I will add a note to the instructions.

regards,

Martin.

[Pete Harvey]

Martin

Thank you very much for creating this program, unfortunately after following your very good instructions and altering my settings as per your instructions, I have tried posting my Dudley Road thread on to a new blog on the new forum and all I get is just the HTML text when I preview the post, also I would like to transfer all 33 pages to the new forum so I will wait for the Mk 3 or 4 so I can do it all in one go.

Pete

[10800]

Even after clicking the icon and hitting the update button, Pete?

[Pete Harvey]

yup Rod even after that I'm in no rush, It will be easier when I don't have to do it for every page.

Pete

[1216 025]

Thanks for writing up this tool, Martin . Worked very well the two times I used it so far.

[30801]

Just had a go at this running it on my Mac under Darwine.
It almost worked...
In fact I think it would completely work if RMWeb was accessible to guests at the moment. Since none of the cached login info is available in the Darwine session I get back a chunk of HTML asking me to log in.

[martin_wynne]

30801, on 11 October 2009 - 09:36 , said:

Just had a go at this running it on my Mac under Darwine. It almost worked...

Hi 30801,

The Transfer Utility visits Old RMweb as a "guest", so it may not be able to retrieve the pages at present.

edit: Old RMweb is now working normally again.

Instead, log in on Old RMweb. Then view, select all and copy the page source*, and then click the blue "paste page source directly instead" link on the Transfer Utlility instead of clicking button 3. Remember to set your User Name first. *View > Page Source menu item in most browsers.

regards,

Martin.

[30801]

Thanks for that.
It gave me some likely looking HTML so it looks like a goer.

Cheers

Dave

[Tel2010]

martin_wynne, on 11 October 2009 - 09:46 , said:

Hi 30801,

The Transfer Utility visits Old RMweb as a "guest", so it may not be able to retrieve the pages at present.

Instead, log in on Old RMweb. Then view, select all and copy the page source*, and then click the blue "paste page source directly instead" link on the Transfer Utlility instead of clicking button 3. Remember to set your User Name first.

*View > Page Source menu item in most browsers.

regards,

Martin.

Hi Martin
Thank you that,i had been following the instructions to no avail, wouldnt work for me in firefox or explorer,but doing it as you suguest above,by copying page source and using Tranfer Utility instead works a treat

[John Geeee]

Hi Martin.

Just a note to let you know that I had similar problems using the utility to copy my old Layout thread into my new blog. when I copied and pasted the old layout page link into the utility all it would show was my old user name and a link to the page I was trying to copy. I had to view the source for the old page and then copy and paste that into the extracted HTML code window. I also found that for each page I copied I had to close and restart the utility otherwise it would not update the preview to the new page and when I copied the HTML over to a new blog entry it just pasted the previous page instead .

[martin_wynne]

John Geeee, on 11 October 2009 - 14:19 , said:

Just a note to let you know that I had similar problems using the utility to copy my old Layout thread into my new blog.

Hi John,

I'm afraid that while Andy has had to restrict access to Old RMweb, the Transfer Utility isn't usable.

Everything should be fine when the new server is up and running in a few days time. So it might be best to wait until then to do your transfers. In the meantime you can get familiar with the new site and maybe post some fresh stuff which isn't on the old site.

edit: Old RMweb is now working normally again and the Transfer Utility is fully usable.

regards,

Martin.

[John Geeee]

martin_wynne, on 11 October 2009 - 14:31 , said:

I'm afraid that while Andy has had to restrict access to Old RMweb, the Transfer Utility isn't usable. Everything should be fine when the new server is up and running in a few days time. So it might be best to wait until then to do your transfers. In the meantime you can get familiar with the new site and maybe post some fresh stuff which isn't on the old site.

Hi Martin.
Ahh ok. I have copied what I need to now anyway, it just meant I had to do it more by manually cutting and pasting the html code. I guess that the utility still did all the tidying up so it was still very useful. Thank you for creating it:D. It all helps to learn the new forums.
regards
John Geeeee

[martin_wynne]

post deleted -- Old RMweb is now working normally again and the Transfer Utility is fully usable.

[buffalo]

Hi Martin,
Just a quick note/chaff to say thanks for making this utility available. I managed to transfer one page from my old workbench yesterday using the manual paste method, and everything went fine I'll wait until the new server comes on line before trying to move the rest...

Nick

[DIW]

martin_wynne, on 11 October 2009 - 09:46 , said:

Hi 30801,

The Transfer Utility visits Old RMweb as a "guest", so it may not be able to retrieve the pages at present.

Instead, log in on Old RMweb. Then view, select all and copy the page source*, and then click the blue "paste page source directly instead" link on the Transfer Utlility instead of clicking button 3. Remember to set your User Name first.

*View > Page Source menu item in most browsers.

regards,

Martin.

Martin,

Is this going to be affected when the old RMweb is locked off as an archive - I mean, does the Transfer Utility interact with the old forum?

I am wondering here whether all transfers will need to be performed before the lock-off, or whether it will still be possible to transfer at that time?

Thanks,

Dave

[martin_wynne]

DIW, on 13 October 2009 - 12:04 , said:

Is this going to be affected when the old RMweb is locked off as an archive - I mean, does the Transfer Utility interact with the old forum?

I am wondering here whether all transfers will need to be performed before the lock-off, or whether it will still be possible to transfer at that time?

Hi Dave,

I can't answer with absolute certainty, because it's Andy at the controls, not me.

If Guest access is still allowed for reading Old RMweb, the Transfer Utility will continue to work. It doesn't need write access.

If Andy makes Old RMweb accessible only to logged-in members, I would have to do some work on the Transfer Utility so that it can log itself in as a "member". That may or may not be straightforward -- I would need to do some reading up on the subject. I don't believe Andy will want to go that way because it will make problems for images hot-linked from Old RMweb to New RMweb -- you can see at present that some images are not showing while Old RMweb is locked out of use. But there may be server or search spider/bots considerations which force the issue.

All the same considerations apply to the infant index system: http://85a.co.uk/rmweb_phpbb

regards,

Martin.

[DIW]

Hi Martin,

Thank you for the reply.

Cheers,

Dave

[Andy Y]

When the server move is complete Guest viewing of the old forum will be re-enabled which should overcome the current situation.

[martin_wynne]

Andy Y, on 14 October 2009 - 12:04 , said:

When the server move is complete Guest viewing of the old forum will be re-enabled which should overcome the current situation.

Thanks Andy.

When the old site becomes read-only at the end of the year, will Guest access still be possible?

The option to paste the page source directly overcomes any such problems, but it makes the Transfer Utility a bit trickier to use.

regards,

Martin.

[Andy Y]

martin_wynne, on 14 October 2009 - 12:14 , said:

When the old site becomes read-only at the end of the year, will Guest access still be possible?

I certainly intend to keep it that way Martin.