First: Apologies to everyone for the delays. Guess I’m still dealing with the emotional fallout of Rebecca dying a few months ago. Hard to find the will to get things done some days. But making progress.

Second: All the Category Zip Files have been rebuilt, copied over and indexed. They will show up in the Category Pages. Sort by the rightmost column and the .ZIP file will be at the top or bottom of the list depending on how many times you clicked it.

The one for the Scientific American Series 2 is absurdly huge… like 28GB. I’ll try to split that into multiple files that are easier to download.

Third: I also added the “Added Last 30/60/90 Days” Pages to the Main Index. I left the “Added Last 180 Days” nonfunctional for now since it tries to list every book in the Library in a single table. Once the new site is past 180 days I’ll reactivate the link.

The Librarian

p.s. Going to try to get the Flash Drive Purchase system back up tomorrow.

Here’s a real doozy for anyone who likes old books. Pretty shocking actually. They could at least scan the books and preserves copies of the scans.

https://thepostmillennial.com/federal-judge-rules-its-fair-use-for-anthropic-to-destroy-books-to-feed-to-ai-language-models?cfp

The Librarian

I’ve gotten the tables and the pages and indexes rebuilt and active and the files are copying over and should be done in the next hour or two.

So the main site download function is up and running. I’ve been working on it a couple days and for the next few days I have to catch up on some other chores. I’ll continue rebuilding the rest of the site over the next week or two.

The Librarian

p.s. If you try to download a file makes sure it has a .pdf extension. If it has a .htm extension that means the file has not copied over yet.

I tested the Page/Table generation procedures today and got the first three Download Categories Added and Functional.

Now it’s just a matter of building a 50,000 row spreadsheets with all the Book Names, Sizes and Download Links then dumping them all to a big CSV to be imported into the Database.

After that is the tedious adding of 160+ SQL Table Queries and 160+ Pages on which to display those tables. That should be done this weekend at which point all the books should be accessible.

The Librarian

I’ve gotten the Table plugins working. Spent some time figuring out the new URL linking in this WordPress configuration but finally made some sense of it.

But I did that on the larger Server which then crapped out on me as I tried to take it live instead of this one. But now it won’t even book. So I just did a quick install of the Table Plugins on this one and we’re good.

The Main Index is there but none of the Categories have links yet. Have to populate the Books database which I’ll do tomorrow after testing the new URL structure then producing all of those 15,000 URLS and populating them into the database.

THEN I have to produce dynamic tables for all of the Categories and Pages to display them. I’ll probably just add them one at a time as I get the procedure worked out.

The Librarian

Finally got the WordPress plugins working properly and in the process of rebuilding the Download Tables. Should have them back up, or at least some of them, in the next day or two.

The Librarian

I have installed and reinstalled Server 2012, Server 2019, IIS, PHP, mySql and WordPress on 3 different servers and a fast PC. At least twice on each machine. Each time using fresh downloads of all the software packages only to have one of the fundamental plugins I use (which allows filling pages with dynamic from a database) fail to work on every single installation.

I’ve gone round and round with Tech Support for both WordPress and the plugin with ZERO progress and have officially given up on WordPress as a viable platform for now. WordPress says it’s the Plugin. The Plugin folks say it’s WordPress.

So I’m gong to revert back to Joomla which I used for years before the transition to WordPress several years ago.

My goal will be to get the site Functional (i.e. the Book Downloadable.) first then worry about making it “pretty”. That’s going to be my priority this week.

The Librarian

p.s. Oh and three different Linux/Apache Installations on the same servers with the same results.

Finally got the WordPress software working properly and got a menu item added to go to the Download Pages.

Those pages are table based using SQL queries to pull the data out of a Database. For some reason the Table building software is not working correctly. Opened a Support ticket to get that fixed. Once it is I’ll be able to mass import the Books and Category stuff. Might not be pretty but it will be functional at least.

The Librarian

This temporary server’s WordPress is not working correctly so it’s just a temp site while I get the real Server configured and ready to move back online. But the new (old) Server which appears to work correctly has a some pernicious bugs in the WordPress that are busting my butt. Simple functions that have worked in the past now suddenly don’t work correctly and are sending me off down one rabbit hole or another looking for solutions. About fed up with it for the day.

The Librarian

I’m moving the new Linux Server into the Server room tomorrow then all of this coming week is devoted to getting the site back up and running with the Library available and everything else working.

Other than a Dentist appt and Optometrist visit and a Vet visit I have put other projects on hold until the site is restored.

The Librarian