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Open Poetry #51
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IMPORTANT NOTICE-Ron’s Poetry Forums and Websites
| Open Poetry #51 |
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IMPORTANT NOTICE-Ron’s Poetry Forums and Websites |
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Kit McCallum
Administrator
Member Laureate
since 2000-04-30
Posts 14774Ontario, Canada 
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IMPORTANT NOTICE-Ron’s Poetry Forums and Websites With Ron’s recent passing, many are wondering what will happen to the poetic legacy that Ron created through his websites and forums. One month ago, Ron was wondering that exact same thing, and he gave me permission to share with you, what follows. Ron spoke to myself and my husband Rob (Ron’s friend and fellow programmer) in depth about the existing situation. Ron explained that time was of the essence. There were deadlines looming on multiple fronts regarding leased server issues, domain extensions, as well as pending coding modifications for the 3 poetry programs that were essentially 22 years old. As Ron said, “The problem is that a lot of this stuff is ‘in my head’ and we don’t have time to get it out.” The hosting company, from which Ron leased his web server to house the many, many pages that made up Netpoets.com, 100-poems.com and Piptalk.com was discontinuing their Texas hosting service in September 2021. Without intervention, these 3 sites, among others, would simply expire and no longer exist. Ron was not concerned early on, and had been exploring various alternatives to transfer his extensive requirements to another hosting provider when unfortunately, his illness rapidly took center stage. This turned into a much more complex concern very quickly for Ron, and it required him to immediately rethink his overall plans. Ron was the founder, the conscience and the heart of Netpoets, 100-poems and Piptalk. For over 22 years, he managed the daily supervision, maintenance and the hefty monthly costs required to keep these websites up and running year after year. Ron made it clear that he did not want to burden Rob and I with the management and costs associated to the existing scenario, and suggested that unless we could come up with an alternative solution together, then the simplest option would be to let all 3 websites ‘disappear’ in September. I don’t think I need to explain how difficult these discussions were. We were talking about Ron’s life and Ron’s legacy in the midst of the raw, inevitable truths of life and what was to come. As you can imagine, these discussions became overwhelming at times, as they made Ron’s health issues heartbreakingly “real” for all of us. After many hours of review, we agreed to work toward a goal of developing a read-only version of Netpoets.com, 100-poems.com and Piptalk.com. The intention was to make the existing content (poems, comments, posts and archives) available for future enjoyment online while maintaining the familiar look, feel and essence of Ron’s original web creations. Essentially, these 3 sites would look relatively the same as they do now, but they would no longer be interactive. To accomplish this, Ron transferred the domains over to Rob and I, and we have since extended them by two years to ensure the domain names did not expire in the short term. Ron gave Rob access to the poetry sites to download the existing web content. Unfortunately, Ron became too ill to provide any additional off-line content or insights. In honor of Ron, Rob has continued to develop read-only versions of the 3 sites using the contents of the existing web site pages. We hope to have these sites available down the road before too long. In the interim, please be advised that as of August 30, 2021 (just before the leased server expires), Netpoets.com, 100-poems.com and Piptalk.com will be temporarily unavailable. The content will be redirected to a new server and replaced with a “placeholder page (under-construction style page)” while Rob continues to work on the new read-only versions of all 3 sites. Please ensure if you want to copy any of your poems or favorite threads, that you make copies before August 30. Our hope is that they will become available again down the road, however life has a way of changing our plans when we least expect it, so to be safe, please ensure you have copies for your own purposes. Our goal is to continue to preserve these web sites for the foreseeable future in order to honor Ron and maintain a historic version for people to remember and appreciate the heart and soul that Ron and the poets poured into these sites. |
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| © Copyright 2021 Kit McCallum - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
Thank you, Kit, and Rob, for taking on a blue challenge. |
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Temptress
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-06-15
Posts 7136Mobile, AL |
Thank you, Kit. "I know this love will tear me to pieces |
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Paul Wilson
since 2002-07-07
Posts 4711United States |
Kit...Thanks for the info. One question, How would I download all of my poems and those from others onto a external hard drive if I want to? All help appreciated, I'm not very tech savvy. ~~To share my poems with you is to share my heart with you~~ Paul |
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Kit McCallum
Administrator
Member Laureate
since 2000-04-30
Posts 14774Ontario, Canada |
Thank you Karilea, Jenn and Paul. I hope you are all doing OK. Paul, I do not know of a quick way to mass copy all at once. The way I show below is the way I would typically save my work from the forums. It lets you copy the post/poem, as well as the comments from within each thread. It gives you a “clean copy” by stripping out all the graphics, most borders, smilies etc (and lets you copy the responses within the thread as well if wanted.) If anyone knows a faster or better way, please pop in to share your ideas. The following is how I would typically isolate a grouping of the poems/posts I wanted by author, then save them to something like a “Word” (or comparable document) on my hard drive. From PipTalk’s upper Main Menu, Choose “Search” Under “Include only this Author” type in their username exactly Under “Include only this Author” click on the button “Exclude Replies” (to ensure you only get originating posts by that author Under the “Where To Search” Section, click on all applicable boxes (Main Forums, Archives, Sanctuary and Mature Content) At the bottom, choose “Perform Search” When the list comes up, you should have all the originating posts/poems associated to that particular author. On the upper left corner under the “Sort By” dropdown box, you could choose to sort by “Date” That will re-sort this list from newest to oldest by date Click on the first post you want to copy/save to open it up In the upper right corner, under “User Options”, select the “Print” icon This should send the full post to screen, and will strip out the special formatting, leaving you with a “clean” screen to copy from. With the clean copy on the screen, Press CNTL+A to select all (or manually click and drag to highlight all with the mouse) Press CNTL+C to copy all the highlighted text to the buffer (or right click with mouse and choose “copy”) Go over to your “Word” document (or comparable document) and click once where you want to put the text Press CNTL+V to paste (or right click with mouse and choose “paste”) You should have a full copy of what was on the post now in Word. Press a few hard returns to advance down a few lines in Word to prepare for copying the next one into the same document. Click back over to the PipTalk forums In the upper left corner, use the “Back Button” to return to the post Use the “Back Button” once again to return to where you left off in the search list Move down and click on the second or next post you want to copy/save to open it up, and repeat the steps by printing to screen, copying and pasting to Word and on to the 3rd, 4th and so on. I hope that helps Paul. I wish I knew a quicker way, but once you get a rhythm going, this actually goes pretty fast. Just be sure to save your Word document often so if something goes wrong, you don’t have to start from scratch again. You can always save each one into separate Word documents as well but if speed is what you are hoping for, you can just keep copying a bunch into the same Word document and clean it up, organize and separate them out later if you want. You can always start a new Word document once in a while after 10 or 20 fill it up too. I hope that helps Paul, and if anyone does know a better way, please do let us know. |
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Kit McCallum
Administrator
Member Laureate
since 2000-04-30
Posts 14774Ontario, Canada |
I wanted to also mention, that if any of you are on Facebook but have not joined the Piptalk Facebook group yet, please pop over to have a look and join. You can search in Facebook for PiPtalk. PipTalk is a Public Facebook group with over 100 members that was started by Ron and Nan quite a long time ago. Members pop in once in a while to touch base and say hello. I have been posting the same updates there as well as here in the forums, to hopefully keep as many people apprised of the situations as I can. After the server goes down, and once we go read-only, it may be the best way for you to stay in contact with other Piptalk members and any new notices. |
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Temptress
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-06-15
Posts 7136Mobile, AL |
Kit, Your way to save them sounds much quicker than the copy/paste onto Notepad that I was doing the night before last. Thank you so much for taking the time for this. |
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Martie
Moderator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-09-21
Posts 28049California |
Thank you Kit!!! |
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Paul Wilson
since 2002-07-07
Posts 4711United States |
Kit...Thanks for the info. I always save my poems as I write them, but was wanting to save some favorite poems written by others over the years. I suppose I can do as you described, but if as you say your goal in the future is to have a read only version on the web, I can always just revert back to that or go to my library and print the ones I want to keep and scan them into a file folder. I will try and see what works best Thanks bunches...Paul ~~To share my poems with you is to share my heart with you~~ |
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wordwizard Member
since 2003-09-08
Posts 483on the way to next world |
Hello Kit Thanks for your help and information. I have been saving my poems as word docs as I have been writing them however I have been 'ecrivan' in the past and under this name, I am not so sure I have copied all my work..Could you help me access that before the end of the month? I no longer have the password to that user name and have asked to gain access to that info, but Ron was already ill. Thank you again! |
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Kit McCallum
Administrator
Member Laureate
since 2000-04-30
Posts 14774Ontario, Canada |
Hi wordwizard/ecrivan. I saved a link below that has isolated ecrivan originating posts for you. If the link does not work for you, you should be able to do a search yourself within PipTalk. When it says "include only this Author", type ecrivan and then click on the "exclude replies" button. I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any further trouble. Searches for ecrivan here |
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LeeJ Member Patricius
since 2003-06-19
Posts 13296 |
Thank you Karilea, Jenn and Paul greatly appreciate your love and concern for Ron's Legacy....he was a great caring person. |
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