Let's Play Archiving Utilities Instructions

Before starting, you will need perl and wget. See the 'Required Utilities' section below if you have to install either of them.
With those installed, you will need to download fetch-thread.pl and fetch-vlp from the main page of this site. Make sure you have the latest version of the scripts every time you run them by checking the main page.

Archiving an SSLP/Hybrid

For easiest use, fetch-thread.pl and wget.exe should be copied into a new folder for each LP you wish to archive.
  1. Edit the fetch-thread.pl file as follows -
    1. Change the $threadURL = ""; line to something like:
      $threadURL = "http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=1234";
    2. Change the $gameName = "?"; line to something like:
      $gameName = "Let's Play Some Game";
    3. Change the $collector = "Your SA Name Here"; line to something like:
      $collector = "Polsy";
    4. Be sure to check the other settings available at the top of the script (particularly authorPosts). Their use is described in the lines immediately above them.
  2. double-click fetch-thread.pl. If perl is installed correctly, this should go ahead and start downloading the LP. Progress will be displayed in the window. When it's finished, it will show some final statistics and errors, if any. Press enter to close it.
  3. The resulting downloaded LP can be viewed by double-clicking the index.html in the folder you copied the files into.
  4. If you decide some of the updates created should be removed, delete the entire "Update X" folder (X being the update number) and re-run fetch-thread.pl. This should modify any files necessary to fully remove this update from the archive.
Any backup video links created will be dead. They will be fixed later. Just upload the entire thread's folder.


Archiving a VLP

For easiest use, fetch-vlp.pl and wget.exe should be copied into a new folder for each LP you wish to archive.
  1. Edit the fetch-vlp.pl file as follows -
    1. Change the $threadURL = ""; line to something like:
      $threadURL = "http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=1234";
    2. Change the $gameName = "?"; line to something like:
      $gameName = "Let's Play Some Game";
    3. Change the $collector = "Your SA Name Here"; line to something like:
      $collector = "Polsy";
    4. Be sure to check the other settings available at the top of the script. Their use is described in the lines immediately above them.
  2. double-click fetch-vlp.pl. If perl is installed correctly, this should go ahead and start downloading the LP. Progress will be displayed in the window. When it's finished, it will show some final statistics and errors, if any. Press enter to close it.
  3. The resulting downloaded LP can be viewed by double-clicking the index.html in the folder you copied the files into.
Any backup video links created will be dead. They will be fixed later. Just upload the entire thread's folder.


File availability
The most recent versions of these scripts, and wget.exe, should be available at http://polsy.org.uk/lp/archive/

Required utilities

perl
perl for Windows is available from ActiveState at http://www.activestate.com/store/activeperl/download/
After clicking Continue (the input fields are optional), download and run the Windows (x86) MSI file.

Any recent version of perl (5, possibly even 4) on other operating systems should be fine.

wget
Versions of wget for Windows and Mac OS X are downloadable from the main page of this site, or you may prefer to download them from the following external sites:

The wget.exe executable for Windows should be available at http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/
A Mac OS X version is available at http://www.statusq.org/archives/2005/02/22/610/. If you know of a more recent and/or reliable site for it, let me know.

Any relatively recent version of wget should work for other operating systems (specifically, version 1.8.2 will not download some video files correctly).

Polsy (polsylp@polsy.org.uk)