Once upon a time, The BeOS Tip Server was running on a BeBox, using TrackerBase (i.e. the filesystem) as its database. When Be ended, I converted it to WordPress and have been hosting it on a commercial provider ever since.
I was just going through my list of annual domain registrations and thinking that it’s probably time to divest myself from hosting the site, since I am not a Haiku user.
Would anyone in the community like to take over hosting of betips.net? I would transfer the domain to your registrar, and provide a Wordpress export dump. You can either copy it to another WP installation or convert it back to TrackerBase, or do it however you like.
Let me know if you’re interested! Otherwise, I might let the old Tip Server just expire next April.
Starting 2004 for Zeta and BeOS with tips and translations in german. Later we add tutorials and translations in several languages. Today they are over 200 tutorials for BeOS, Zeta and Haiku in the old besly and we are working on the new one who are only haiku.
Had to log in, just to say… “Hi Scot, long time no see”. Lots of turn-over in the community over the years obviously… Yet hopefully someone will recognize the historical value of BeTips and preserve the heritage…
/me keeps his copy of the BeOS Bible handy
Curious about what has become of the “Be diaspora” BTW, sometimes wonder about Chris Herborth …etc, but this might not be the place to discuss it (PM?)
we would take over the BeTips so that nothing is lost. However, our main focus is on BeSly. If you agree, you could provide me with an export. I would try to import it.
While the tips themselves are definitely worth preserving, I suspect that the domain isn’t visited that often anymore… So if nobody is found to take it over, it’s not a desaster (at least for Haiku; people that want to preserve BeOS’ ancient heritage will disagree. ).
I do have a data dump of the tipserver from 2001. It ranges from tip001 to tip700 (610 tips altogether). Are there changes after that date?
Also, in 2015, I started to ‘rewrite’ those tips for Haiku, i.e. rename ‘BeOS’ to ‘Haiku’ and adapt to the changes in the environment. I got to tip452.
If the TipServer finds a new home, we may want to use those as starting point to bring it all up-to-date so it’s relevant to Haiku.
Sounds like there are a few ideas here for preserving the content. While I’d rather conserve the history by keeping it all together on one site, and have it live on the original domain, the important thing is that the content survive online in some form or other. I’ve exported the content as a WP export and placed it here:
@humdinger - There are definitely post-2001 tips in the data dump I just posted in case you want to bring your copy up to date (but I wouldn’t be surprised if most of this content is simply no longer relevant in modern Haiku).
@ttcoder Unfortunately I haven’t been in touch with Chris Herborth - I don’t see him online anywhere!
Funny story: A few years ago, I gave my kid (now 16) a copy of the BeOS Bible. One night he was having trouble falling asleep and I suggested that he read something boring. I came back half an hour later and found him reading it
@dcatt No plans to do a Haiku review - I don’t work for, around, or near a publication these days (I do Python programming in the energy conservation space).
Maybe someone can preserve the original betips.net and we start a new tipserver for the updated/still relevant Haiku tips.
I suppose a wiki would be the proper venue or such a thing, making is easy to extend/edit/maintain. @waddlesplash / @kallisti5 : You think such a wiki would be something to create/host at haiku-os.org? Maybe https://help.haiku-os.org that’ll have an entry page to link to the user guide, quick tour, forums, irc and tips?
I’ve just registered an account to let you know that we can provide a free dedicated server to “keep it all together on one site” hopefully under the original domain name. I really do not want to interfere with anyone’s business. But importing everything into a fresh WordPress installation on a new server should be no problem at all. Would be cool to preserve a great bit of history. Again: I am not trying to interfere with anyone’s plans.
I like this idea. So maybe @lorglas can host the old tips with the BeTips domain, and then have a banner or link at the top of the page that refers users to the new Haiku wiki. This way the old tips are still preserved and serachable (there are already too many bad broken BeOS links from back in the day) and users also know where to find up to date Haiku tips.
).