Offline version of the FTB wiki?

[thereter]

I am going to be without internet for about a year and I'm wondering if there is a way to download all the information from the wiki.

Information will be used by me and a couple of other people who are gonna be in the same situation.

Thank you in advance for your time.

 

[Zelfana]

The wiki isn't public yet. There are a couple fan wikis, though, if you mean one of those. But you can save web pages with any browser with "Save page as...". You probably have to navigate to all pages you want to save.

 

[thereter]

I was hoping you weren't gonna say that.

 

[slay_mithos]

Well, an offline site would mean actively going out off their way and making a wiki that works for both online and offline.

Knowing that Wikis are not static html pages, but php or other server-side processed pages, it would require you to install every requirements and a database on your computer.
That could potentially work, but there would have to be the need to give access to databases in order to copy for offline mode, and it would be taxing your computer with things you would generally not want to run on it.

I think you were thinking something along the lines of the small in-browser html pages, or some program displaying it.

But a wiki is something often updated, so making an offline mode based on html would basically mean automating the "save as", and that can not be really a reliable way of doing things either.



I hope I got my point across.


While I am at it, I do know that some browsers do have a built-in offline mode, and others do have plugins/modules to do it, so your best bet would be that.
Be warned that you would still need to regularily visit the pages while online beforehand, but that tip might be good for you.

 

[thereter]

I probably used the wrong term, but I just need something on my computer that can give me all the information i need on how to work the machines and stuff like that. I can get recipes through NEI in game.

 

[Juanitierno]

There are many applications designed to "crawl" a site and save all the pages and images in a sort of offline version of said site.

You could use one of those and save the current state of the wikis of most mods your interested in.

 

[FausticSun]

You can use this tool: http://www.httrack.com/

 

[DrRed]

Just curious, what could possibly stop you from having internet for a year? Army?

 

[thereter]

Yeah, I'm deploying and while I could get internet, it costs a lot.

 

[SeniLiX]

You could download all of the relevant mod spotlights from youtube.

 

[noah_wolfe]

Yeah, I'm deploying and while I could get internet, it costs a lot.

It depends on where you are, but it can range from expensive to not too bad. I had a sat dish split with 3 others for a while, moved to a cellular wireless local loop the locals had established, and a couple of local "commercial" operations spread throughout a somewhat lengthy (multiple-year) deployment. The sat was obviously the most expensive - the commercial offerings (one from AAFES) were only about 60 bucks a month. Once you get outside of major hubs, sat may be your only option though.

 

[thereter]

Where I'm going t

It depends on where you are, but it can range from expensive to not too bad. I had a sat dish split with 3 others for a while, moved to a cellular wireless local loop the locals had established, and a couple of local "commercial" operations spread throughout a somewhat lengthy (multiple-year) deployment. The sat was obviously the most expensive - the commercial offerings (one from AAFES) were only about 60 bucks a month. Once you get outside of major hubs, sat may be your only option though.

Where I'm going is gonna cost $90/month. No idea about any local internet or satellite internet. I'd rather save the money anyways. I don't need the internet.

You could download all of the relevant mod spotlights from youtube.

That's what I was originally gonna do, but unless there's a channel that offers all the information, I'm afraid I might miss something.

 

[NLkippetjeNL]

You could try Direwolf20 he has spotlights of most of the mods

 

[Martz]

Well, an offline site would mean actively going out off their way and making a wiki that works for both online and offline.

Knowing that Wikis are not static html pages, but php or other server-side processed pages, it would require you to install every requirements and a database on your computer.
That could potentially work, but there would have to be the need to give access to databases in order to copy for offline mode, and it would be taxing your computer with things you would generally not want to run on it.

I think you were thinking something along the lines of the small in-browser html pages, or some program displaying it.

But a wiki is something often updated, so making an offline mode based on html would basically mean automating the "save as", and that can not be really a reliable way of doing things either.

You do know that you can download a copy of wikipedia right? Like the entire thing! All articles, all changes, if you have the disk space to handle it (you don't). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

That kinda invalidates your entire statement.

 

[slay_mithos]

No, this is exactly my point, actually.

For one, they have way more powerful servers than what they need, so they can spare a little more queries on the databases.

Secondly, they allow you to download the database, and only the database, that means that you would have to have a way to put it on your screen with something else.
In the case of wikipedia, they link you to http://owi.sourceforge.net/
This needs php, plus the database running, so a mysql would do.
This means you would have to install a wamp server on your pc to view the wiki offline.

I might be mistaken, but that sounds exactly like what I did write on my post, and I did point out that running this kind of things do take a load on your computer.
That can in return make some of the less powerful or older computers have troubles with running that alongside with Minecraft itself, as they both need the hard drive, the memory and the CPU.

Thanks again for reinforcing my point while thinking you were destroying it, you are free to read the actual page you linked to too.


EDIT:
As for the crawlers, it can be useful in this specific case, because he clearly won't have an online access for a long time, but be advised that crawlers do take a lot of resources on the server they are targeting, so please refrain from doing it if possible.

 

[Hydra]

As for the crawlers, it can be useful in this specific case, because he clearly won't have an online access for a long time, but be advised that crawlers do take a lot of resources on the server they are targeting, so please refrain from doing it if possible.

I'm sorry but that's just bollocks. Such a crawler would not do anything else than what google does. And a server most certainly can handle a single crawler downloading a bunch of pages.

And his computer can easily handle the contact of the FTB wiki. It's nothing special. Heck, for a project for my previous employer we downloaded the entire wikipedia and loaded that on a single desktop system to showcase some advanced search technology. No issue at all.

 

[Juanitierno]

"I don't need the internet."

Heresy! Internet is no longer optional, anywhere, for anyone!

It should, by now, be a basic human right.

 

[slay_mithos]

I'm sorry but that's just bollocks. Such a crawler would not do anything else than what google does. And a server most certainly can handle a single crawler downloading a bunch of pages.

And his computer can easily handle the contact of the FTB wiki. It's nothing special. Heck, for a project for my previous employer we downloaded the entire wikipedia and loaded that on a single desktop system to showcase some advanced search technology. No issue at all.

As for running the server on your computer, yes, it can work, assuming you have the same wiki engine and all, and it doesn't take that much resources.
But the fact is that it takes a database and a PHP server on your computer, and that does take some power off your machine.

I do have all that on my computer, for work purpose, and yes, it is not that taxing, but on computers that only have one CPU core (yes, they still exist, sadly), or other computers that aleady don't run Minecraft all that well, running additionnal programs that take hard drive read time and cpu can indeed impact the game experience.

I am not omnipotent, so I don't know about everyone's knowledge about running php/mysql and computer.
What I said is based on the fact that it does take processing power, and some people might not have that much left to spare.



As for the crawlers, yes google does it.
But google does it once every so often, and has processes that tries to optimize the thing, trying not to do it on pages that didn't change since the last time.

Let's just say that 10 people wanted to use crawlers.
It would mean 10 times more than what google did, for once, and that would only provide it to a single person.
These people would probably do an other crawl from times to times to keep their version up to date, taking yet again server time for their own purpose.

As you know, the servers where the wiki/forums/site are running on are not all that great, and have troubles from times to times when there is too much load on them.
That means that the people taking large amount of cpu and bandwidth for their own purpose will hurt the other users.
I call these people egoistical, nothing more.

When the wiki are ready, if they choose to give a way to have an offline version, it would most probably be through a download of a sql dump and a link to the wiki engine used.
Sql dumps are most likely being done anyway, for backups, so it is usually a good way to go.

But that is only for if they want people to have an offline version for themselves.


While I do agree that the OP case is special and that offline mode could really be good for him, I don't believe that most of the people that would use it would indeed be offline.
Plus, that makes an other problem, where people might complain about false/outdated informations, when they have a database that is days or monthes behind because they didn't take the newest dump before complaining.
Let's not forget that putting a dump in a mysql is easy for us, but I know for a fact that it is still too much work for some of the people that don't understand how all of that work (and don't want to understand, just want it to work).


I do apologize for the long posts, but I do feel like I need to explain my point when I see people pointing at a specific point that I feel is not accurate or relevant in the situation.
You are of course totally free to disagree or ignore the entire post if you so desire, and it might contain errors and imperfections.

 

[Hydra]

As for the crawlers, yes google does it.
But google does it once every so often, and has processes that tries to optimize the thing, trying not to do it on pages that didn't change since the last time.

We were talking about a tool that just makes a simply local copy of a harddisk. That doesn't do anything other than google does and it only does it ONCE when you tell it to.

So please don't go tell me how google worked. I've worked for 12 years for a search engine firm as a developer, I know pretty damn well how they work and what you're saying is nonsense. A simply tool that makes a static copy of a site is complete peanuts for any webserver.

 

[slay_mithos]

I don't care where you worked, you missed the most important point...

Yes, it does it "ONCE", but per user, and every time they decide they want to refresh their copy.

And speaking about work experience, I happen to know what is the difference between asking for an HTML file and asking for the render of a PHP one, but whatever.
You want to act as a "I know everything, you don't know anything", so I won't bother continuing further into discussing how people exagerate with crawlers and stuff...