Forums closing at the end of January - Alternatives?

Being that the forums are closing at the end of January, what are some other similar sites people use to find good info on Dell computers that are similar to here?

With much regret, I must announce that all TechnologyGuide sites and forums will be closing (going offline) effective January 31, 2022. This was a corporate decision. Many of you know we were headed toward closure for a while, we lost our editorial staff in 2017 and so it's surprising the forum side was able to stay in operation this long.
I have countless memories here and I'll never forget it. I always looked to NotebookReview as the place real gearheads went to discuss everything technical. At the same time, we attracted regular computer users who just wanted to discuss their machines and get a little help. If there was a notebook sold, you could find (or create) a discussion on it here. No doubt this is a loss for everyone. Unfortunately I was not able to secure rights to buy the forums or anything so it will be truly gone.

Please create threads to discuss where you might want to migrate afterwards - reddit, etc. If you have your own site/video channel you may link that too.

On behalf of the small but dedicated volunteer staff here, we wish you the best. We wish we could send you off a little more gracefully. Please enjoy the remaining time.

Best,
Charles Jefferies & the NBR Moderation Team​

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/all-technologyguide-forums-will-close-jan-31-2022.837524/

 

Might explain the sporadic downtime ...ah jeez. I came here because of the mediocre Dell website forum.
Every topic is answered by one of their "representatives" who dumb it down and suggest some stupid error solving in windows cmd.

Thinkpad has a dedicated forum but dell is a hard one.
Dell I feel is like the enterprise equivalent that not too many know about and discussions/forums and trouble shooting are not an easy thing to find.

I am probably going to archive what I can to wayback and saving websites offline for my own documentation.

What about subforums on reddit? I can find dell, xps etc but no page for precision line?

 

Man, I was wondering about that but hadn't seen the announcement. That's disappointing. Like @unnoticed I have found the official Dell forums to be meh.

I wouldn't mind setting up and maintaining a Dell Precision subreddit. (I see that there is already one in existence that is specific to XPS.) Would there be any interest among other users in switching over to that?

[Edit]
I see that https://www.reddit.com/r/DellPrecision exists but it is private.
I just created https://www.reddit.com/r/DellPrecisionMWS/. It is "restricted" right now, no posting allowed (just wanted to grab the name) but I can open it up once I do some initial setup/admin stuff, if there is interest. Would also be happy to take on some other regulars as helpers/mods if interested (maybe PM me in that case).

Also disappointed in the loss of "knowledge" from old posts that will result from this. I have a number of key post URLs saved and I'll see if I can find equivalent "archive.org" URLs to point to over in a FAQ/info post (at Reddit or wherever else).

 

Options are being reviewed in the thread where the announcement was made.

The issue stems from whether or not we could get the database, or archive the forum to bring to another site presumably hosted by the mods/members

 

Check out http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/where-do-we-go-now.837527/

 

Great, I hope that a solution is found. If the site is successfully transitioned to new owners or a DB dump allows for it to be completely moved, or if there is broad buy-in on a "new" forum to move too, then I'll happily hop over. Just reading the announcement thread, it doesn't seem like there is interest from the owners to make that easy.

I'd also happily pay a small monthly "donor fee" or something to help out. Also, I imagine that this is not needed but I'm quite familiar Apache/PHP/MySQL/etc. so I'd be happy to help with collecting a dump of the site files & DB and getting it stood up elsewhere (...if there is anyone who has the sort of access needed to grab that stuff).

I myself am only really involved in the Precision scene — I don't really pay any attention to other areas of the forum — and I know that is the same for a few others too, so that's the niche that I myself want to make sure continues to exist (on Reddit or elsewhere).

I was just poking around archive.org to see how complete their archive of this site is. Most old posts are archived (examples: one two) but it seems to be really slow to access and a lot of newer posts aren't in the archive yet (example: my post on fixing the Precision 7530 disappearing drive issue). I'll be creating my own archive of a number of posts and threads.

 

Just wanted to say how disappointing I also found the announcement of a forum shutdown. It would be losing friends now scattered all over and so much knowledge would be lost. I hope a solution is found. Just in case, thank you so much to everyone who has offered help and knowledge here!

 

Im going to discuss some options with a colleague of mine of whom I respect for a temporary/potential possible perma solution in regards to forums, its something he has dabbled with time and again.

I would say we should look into capturing the content here as there is no guarantee that TT wont simply wipe the drives or just unplug it to be left in a closet until the end of time. Even if its deemed fair and legal for us to move content to another host at a later date, the same risk applies.

I have no interest in ownership or moderation. What I do wish for is to keep visiting the forum that is the front lines of at the end of the day, a place to better educate the consumer and promote Tech news that may otherwise fall by the wayside.

I guess the last huge hurdle is the forums name. Will post on the other relevant threads.

 

I already played with downloading a static copy of a section of the site, with some success. I’m going to try to download the entire Dell section this weekend. I don’t think that I can do the entire site. There’s just too many threads/pages.

Without database access, standing the site up elsewhere with the same content would require basically custom “scraping” of all of the pages to try to pull all of the data elements out. (Unless there is some more API-level access that I am unaware of. Maybe whatever they use to make it work with Tapatalk?)

 

How much space and duration is it taking up for you in the Dell section?