# Would it be possible to make the board archives available for sale?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-possible-to-make-the-board-archives-available-for-sale/169890>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [April 20, 2003, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-possible-to-make-the-board-archives-available-for-sale/169890 "2003-04-20T18:57:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cainxinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7bcc69/32.png) [@cainxinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cainxinth)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-possible-to-make-the-board-archives-available-for-sale/169890/1 "2003-04-20T18:57:44Z")

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I don’t know how many megs or gigs a big DB is, but if it fits on a couple CDs or DVDs I would definitely shell out around $40 to preserve this valuable resource. Follow up question: is it possible for the hampsters to one day drop for good and lose the archive?

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**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2003, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-possible-to-make-the-board-archives-available-for-sale/169890/2 "2003-04-20T19:20:11Z")

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1. Possible, but not probable. It would take some work to make the SDMB viewable in a form that does not essentially require re-creating a vBulletin installation, complete with Apache, MySQL, and PHP. And I think the answer of the Staff in the past has been “No” regardless.

2. The SDMB is backed up every night, so it is possible to lose a day. Also, in the history of the SDMB, there have been at least two occasions where several days, or even weeks, were lost. But it’s not really that likely nowadays.