Archive phpBB forum as static HTML

While working on the permanent archiving of web contents by Galician activist network ContraMINAcción within our LegadoWeb archive service, we found ourselves in need of some way to turn a phpBB forum (using database) into a similarly designed and browsable static non-database mirror.

For this, we did some research on the WWW and we finally chose the process described by IBBoard, which was later extended by Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty. Unluckily, the latter described a process which required some script (phpbb_fix_css_js.sh file) to allow for the static forum to use the same CSS styling than the original. But the file was missing at the linked URL. Without knowing what that script was supposed to do exactly, we had to study the code of the pages generated by previous steps of the process, and then make tests until we eventually got the solution. Here we describe it for those people in need of a complete process like we needed, so they can create a static and permanent mirror of some abandoned forum.

1. First to be taken care of is that style.php file (or style.php?id=1&lang=gl in our case) should not be moved from its place at the root directory of the forum (we mean, its static place, not the original one) to /archive/ directory, as someone could understand from McIntyre’s instructions: this file must be kept in that root directory.
2. This style.php should then be renamed as style.css. It’s important to remove any rests of parameters in the filename that could come from previous steps.
3. After that we have to create a .htaccess in the same root directory of the static forum, it if doesn’t exist. If it already exists, then we should add these lines at its begining:

   DirectoryIndex index.html index.shtml index.php
   Redirect 301 /static/index.php http://yoursite.com/static/index.html
   Redirect 301 /static/style.php http://yoursite.com/static/style.css

   (Second line is necessary depending on the server’s configuration: it could search for anindex.php or an index.html in the first place. To be sure, those first lines will be useful.)

We expect this to be of help for other people and collectives that need to make a historical archive and move it somewhere else.

Oh, and you shouldn’t forget about doing an address mapping, taking old URLs to the new ones within a .htaccess, which must be placed on the original forum’s directory. Then, do some checks of the redirections before you delete the phpBB files and database. And, of course, make a backup of everything befor you proceed.

Now you can visit the static archive of ContraMINAcción’s forum in its new location at LegadoWeb.

And remember that our LegadoWeb service is funded via voluntary donations from the organizations and any person interested in the preservation of the contents that we host there: