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How can I recover items from the "deleted" file?

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Created On: 22 Oct 1998 1:41 pm
Last Edited: 4 Oct 2004 11:55 am

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Some forums were deleted (not exported) accidentally and we want to get them back on the site. How can I retrieve forums from the deleted file?

Also: access lists, access groups.

Answer


  1. Retrieve the file "deleted" from the Web Crossing binaries directory on the server (this is the "webx" directory, unless you are accessing Web Crossing as a Hosted customer or via v5.0+ built in FTP, in which case "webx" is remapped to the "system" directory).
  2. Open "deleted" with a text editor. If "deleted" hasn't been discarded for a long time, it may be very large and many text editors won't be able to handle it. One that will is "Ultra Edit", a shareware editor for Windows that can handle huge files.
  3. Find and copy the relevant folder or discussion (many other items are simply repackaged discussions, such as blogs) in the file (or user group). The file is in Web Crossing's SGML export format, which will look familiar to anyone experienced with HTML. A folder will be enclosed within "topic" or "folder" tags (depends on version), so copy everything from the leading "<folder ..." down to "</folder>". To recover a discussion the procedure is the same but discussions are bounded by "<conversation..." and "</conversation>" or "<discussion..." tags.

    User Groups are delineated thusly: ******** Automatic export of deleted user group XYZ ...
    Followed by the names of the users you deleted.
  4. Save what you copied as a new PLAIN TEXT file, and put it back on the server.
  5. For folders/discussions, import the saved file by navigating to the parent location of where it used to reside. Click "import" and enter your file name.

    For user groups, navigate to the access list where you deleted the group. Click "Show Groups". Enter the group name into "New group name" and click "Add New Group". Next click "Import", then enter the name of the saved file you created.

Note: The tags are "topic" and "conversation" for historic reasons, early versions of Web Crossing called folders "topics" and discussions "conversations".