The Old Elevated Observations Forum is GONE!!!!

[Gralto]

Hi All,
This is a salient lesson for those who value their data but don't take steps to ensure it's saved...somewhere. The reason we've moved here is due to the gremlins in the old EO site. However, even after this one began, the other existed in a stagnant but still readable state for several years.
Sadly...no longer.

Dirty Faz has brought to my attention that his links to the old site don't work. I tried just now too and noticed the same thing. A few other google searches using keywords - nothing. At the risk of sounding melodramatic - this is a bit of a tragedy.

There was an ENORMOUS amount of information and posts written by many very knowledgeable Hollies fans and to see that all of this is now gone - 7 years of vibrant discussion, is really quite shattering.

A lot of Hollies fans were very disappointed when the first great Hollies website - American Bob Gansler's 'Home For The Hollie Days' went under I'm guessing circa 2000/2001. Unlike the old Elevated Observations site which was hosted on a free forum hosting site, Gansler simply stopped paying his monthly domain bills and that was that. The site went down and all information was lost forever. ( I guess Gansler himself may still have the code for the pages but 15 years on, would it still load up? I doubt it).

However, while the TopFreeForum Elevated Observations site is gone, some of it does survive. For this, I have a workmate who put me on to the Internet Archive to thank. Over 450 Billion Pages saved of the Internet - only one catch...you have to save it yourself AND...you can only do it one page at a time. It's a laborious and time consuming thing to do but if you are worried about information on the WWW disappearing, this is your opportunity to do something about it. The capture is like taking a freezeframe capture. If one of the links gets updated and further posts occur, they are not part of the snapshot. You would need to go back and re-save the additional material.

So... on 31 July 2014, I spent about 2 hours saving the first part of the old Elevated Observations site. However, this was the only time I commenced doing this. All I managed to save was Page 6. This includes every post and every follow up post and page within a thread on Page 6 topics only. Unfortunately, I started at the oldest (untouched) threads and only got this far. The other 5 pages of threads, follow on pages and links - I never got to them.

Check out here to see the links saved:
web.archive.org/web/20140731021748/http://www.topfreeforum.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=659a135451c4fa66b3701841326eaa18&mforum=hollies

You will see the entire old forum here but the only links that work are those on Page 6.

Checking Internet Archive, I note that Sept 2014 was the last time a TopFreeForum page from anyone's forum was saved on Internet Archive - not just mine, from anyone's on any subject (and there were hundreds) - suggesting the TopfreeForum thing got shut down across the board by the (Singaporean? Malaysian?) owners around this time. I feel a little better (not much though!) that I managed to get 1/6th of the old forum saved.

I know how much time I put into some of my old posts and I never saved them as word docs first. Some were several thousand words - all gone (unless you printed stuff out or copied and pasted posts into word docs).I know others who posted far more regularly than myself who will have lost more in terms of their output.

The most disappointing thing is that I tried to contact the site owners of TopFreeForum several times and never got a proper response. They would occasionally send a very brief response in broken english suggesting they could fix the bugs we all encountered for $$ and ignored my pleas to supply me access to the original files so I could save them somewhere.

Call me a technological philistine (which I probably am!) but to my archival eyes, nothing still beats a printed hard copy. You don't need electricity or any form of technology or machinery to eyeball a physical item. The Dead Sea Scrolls were legible after surviving in a cave for over 2500 years and yet vast warehouses of digitally-borne material can be eradicated with the press of one button. The key is to capture that precious digital material and place a copy somewhere. A remit I failed dismally in this situation.

So there you go. Most of the 7 years of Hollies online history gone for good. Thanks again to everyone who contributed on the old site and enjoy what little I did manage to save.
cheers
Simon

[cameron]

What an awful shame that the old forum has gone under. I don't think I actually got around to joining, but read most of the pages. I particularly liked the thread about Hollies rarities and did save a list of what has yet to be released and other tracks that were considered rare.

How sad that it's gone, but I guess all we can do is keep moving forward with this forum - over time more posts will be added equalling and bettering the original forum. I still think this is still the best Hollies forum. The "official" one is largely very quiet and seems to have more casual fans on it than those who've really delved into the Hollies' history and can produce essays on the such.

I do agree about keeping hard copies of things or at least a back up. Other than the two forums, there's very little of the Hollies' story to be found anywhere, making the forums invaluable.

For now, keep up the good work Simon and keep smiling

[JamesT]

Yes, very, very sad that the old forum has disappeared. A HUGE wealth of information was there. This forum is somewhat quiet at times, but the official forum even more so. Where is Geoff Coles these days?

PS: the Gansler site was the first Hollies website I ever visited in about 1997.  The mickey-take of the Hollies albums was great - 'Dissident Plight', anyone?

[Gralto]

Thanks Cameron and James, and I must apologise for not posting much here in recent times. My spare time in the past 4-5 months has gone into writing a new issue of my ancient Hollies newsletter. So far I'm at over 20,000 words which is overkill admittedly! I'll provide more info shortly but the plan is for it to be finished by the end of April. I will then most likely sell copies as a one off issue, to be made available as a PDF, downloadable from somewhere. It won't be expensive and hopefully will contain a few articles of interest.

And to Moorlock - welcome 'home'! Glad to see you have joined up to the new EO, even more relevant with the old site's disappearance. And yes James, Geoff has been absent from these pages for a little while, the site poorer for his absence.

To everyone who continues to post stuff here at Elevated Observations, many thanks on behalf of all Hollies fans. EO will always endeavour to inform, entertain and keep it real in The Hollies world. Speaking of the latter, Terry Sylvester on his Twitter account continues the verbal barbs flying at Graham Nash in recent days. This really is going to be some book of his, if it ever appears. Can anyone post a setlist from one of Terry's shows performed in the past 6 months? Interesting to see what he is choosing these days.

[dirtyfaz]

This is really sad as there was so much valuable information available here. More than I will ever remember and the discusions about different albums etc that were very valid.
Just goes show the continued value about backing up information on computers/internet.