Mastodon lets you download your complete post archive, so that you have a personal offline copy of all your account's posts and attachments. I've done a guide to downloading your Mastodon archive here:
However, I need your help! Can you suggest ways for non-technical people to view their post archives? There's no official viewer, and the only viewers I could find were aimed at techy people.
Maybe they could put a note about it on the front page?
(The dialogue box on my browser/OS calls it a "file upload" so if there's no other info people will assume it is being sent to someone's server for processing.)
Agreed, it's just asking for confusion to put them on the same page with that layout. I often have to help people who have tried to upload the archive in a transfer.
I raised this as an issue on the Mastodon Github back in March, if you're comfortable using GH feel free to add a thumbs up:
@FediTips What I also meant is that downloading 5 different files to port your account is rubbish. Why not ticky boxes to select which bits you want and then a single zip file?
I agree, and am guessing a lot of people think the archive is indeed a zip of all these files. That's what the page layout strongly implies, even though it isn't the reality.
Can only assume the Masto devs haven't had time to rewrite the import function to allow a single bundle of imported data.
Someone wrote a tool that would take your Twitter archive and put it up as a searchable Web page. I'd really like that for Mastodon archives as well.
The server transfer process really should copy over your old posts, or at least copy them over with the permission of the owner of the server that you are moving to.
Copying over possibly tens of thousands of posts all in one go for every single account transfer can be quite demanding on a server. The only platform (AFAIK) to try this was Firefish, but I think it got slowdowns when they did this?
Also, bear in mind copying posts over to a new server will break all the threads. The replies, the links, the boosts etc will disappear. If you leave the posts on the old server with a redirect to your new account, this keeps everything intact.
OK, I won't argue over horrible Fedi basic design, which is baked in. (In many such cases you're leaving because your old server is going away, so everything is not "kept intact".) Instead I'll just repeat that it would be good if someone made a tool so I could display my old posts as a simple, searchable page on my own site.
I'm not trying to say how things should be designed, I'm trying to highlight the challenges that designers face when trying to connect lots of independent servers together.
There are a couple of options if you want your posts permanently in one place:
It's a matter of taste, but from my experience in tech support, asking non-techy people to use command lines isn't a good idea. It used to be okay for non-techies in the days of DOS etc, but (IMHO) not nowadays.
"And, honestly, I don't think you'll find anything easier to use right now. Maybe in a few years?"
Yup... that's why am asking, just in case it exists? 😦
It's weird that Mastodon didn't provide anything official, but I don't know how hard it is to code.
I found this off-line web browser viewer. It is very easy to use.
On this page click CODE and there is an option to download the zip file. From within the zip, open archive_page.html. It contains the instructions and will display your posts at the bottom of the page. I recommend the MANUAL loading mode as it walks you through which files from your archive to select.
You do however need to request your archive separately.
I did list this in the guide, but it still seems very techy. It would be better if there was something that was as easy to install as an app from an app store.
Yes, of course but there is no such thing. I searched for quite some time and this was the only thing I found that I could understand and get it to work. I am not a techy, though I'm old enough to remember DOS and using C:\ prompt. ;)
All it takes is some basic knowledge of saving and opening zip archives, files, and how to find and select them.
@FediTips@adachika192 if this is on Github Pages, the chances are good that "uploading" means only loading it into JavaScript memory and not send it to a website. But I would have to read the source to say for sure.
@FediTips what about a web tool where the person would upload a copy of the archive? I assume it's a zip. Not for permanent storage of course, just to view.
That's what the viewers I could find do, but I don't think this is very practical for most people? I guess it would help if there was a website run by someone else, but then you get into privacy issues about putting your archives in someone else's hands.
It would be nicer if there was just a simple app people could download that worked on their computer or phone.