We Need More Time Squidoo

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   favoredposted 10 years ago

   I'm trying to find anyone in Squidoo HQ that will help grant the same grace period to the writers so that the Squidoo site is not taken down until the grace period ends on HP. With all the problems caused by the transfer it is impossible to get it done.  I've been to that forum, sent emails and posted on media hoping someone would respond, but no one has.
   
   Does anyone there still have a heart for doing the right thing? On behalf of all the people who were faithful to Squidoo in doing there best, please grant this request. I'd like to believe that HQ would think more of those who called this place home for so long.  HP is trying to help in what they can, but they need cooperation from everyone. 
   
   "Those who extend grace will have grace extended to them."

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      Titiaposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      As far as I know the 301 redirect will stay because that's a HP matter now, not a Squidoo matter anymore. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think there is a Squidoo HQ anymore, all have gone their own way.

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         favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Titia, what about the dashboard so we can pull our links and other info? I copied my articles, but it doesn't copy info inside the modules in edit form for coding. Plus the thousands of photos I need to retrieve.

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         TonyPayneposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         I have a feeling you are right. Squidoo HQ went their own ways, and I assume that Hubpages are running the servers etc. Just hope they keep running, but the end date might be when the Squidoo offices need to be vacated, assuming the servers were kept there and not operated by a 3rd party.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Squidoo has closed down so I doubt there's anyone left except a couple of engineers keeping the server going.

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   relacheposted 10 years ago

   Favored, there was an export feature up on Squidoo for six weeks that created a compressed export of your entire account.  That giant box that was at the top of the dashboards was about that and making a new HubPages account.
   
   However, if you did not take advantage of that feature during that month and a half, it's gone now.  There is no Squidoo HQ to contact because the entire organization doesn't exist anymore.  HubPages now owns and manages that domain.  It was announced back in August that the entire Squidoo site is coming down on October 1st. 
   
   Which is Wednesday.

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      favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Relache, I did what they asked weeks ago, but the content inside the modules isn't available unless you can go into edit.  Everything you say I am aware of, but someone has to turn the off switch so to speak that deletes the site.  If HP owns it, they can keep it up until the grace period is complete.

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         relacheposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         They bought thecontent and the domain name. That does not mean they wish to maintain millions of low-quality pages on a live website.
         
         By the way, Squidoo has millions of pages.  Only 450k of those got imported, and only 175k of that content came over featured.
         
         This may not have dawned on you yet, but as someone who has been writing on both sites for the last eight years, I can say that HubPages actually isn't as interested in the potential of your older content as much as they are in you making brand-new material to their standards instead of recreating your lenses.

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            favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            relache, every one of my pages is featured on HP and all were transferred. They made money, but one cannot tell that from the transfer. Only 20 had violations and some were easily fixed. Almost all my articles are evergreen and all have been updated (long before the switch). 
            
            If HP wasn't interested in the articles they wouldn't have obtained all content.  I am in the habit of writing new material on a regular basis. It is sad that that there are those with a bitter taste in their mouths with the new members, but they also forget that we were not given a say in the sale and were held in the dark concerning such matters.
            
            My intent is to bring quality to everything I write and that is every place I write, not just here.  I have been writing professionally long before I came to Squidoo or HP so this is not a final resting place, but one I would liked to have enjoyed in my journey.  I hope to uplift and encourage wherever I go, and if that is not what I do, I am not in God's will.  May we all find a place here that brings delight, hope and knowledge to all who visit our pages.

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      TonyPayneposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      The export link is still there on my dashboard, just a link now though, not a big button.
      
      I saved all my lenses by viewing, right clicking and saving, so I can load each one "reasonably well" locally. I think it's only the quizzes that went missing.  Got all of those rebuilt in the hubs now, I made that a priority.

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3. 76

   Lionrhodposted 10 years ago

   Favored:
   
   More important, what can we do to help with the specific issues you're dealing with and what precisely is going wrong?
   
   With any decent luck one of us has already been there and knows the work-around.

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      favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Lionhod, besides the photo issue that people are experiencing, the recipe articles and affiliate ones are basically a mess.  One article I have has over 40 photos. The links are gone so I have no way to find where I got them without being able to see the original links, which I did on the old site. 
      
      I have copied all the articles, but it only shows them live so you can't retrieve any codes.
      
      The modules that have come through I haven't been able to edit without it jumping back up to the top of the page every time I do one thing.  So I have to push done editing and try again.  I know someone else had this issue as well, but seems to have it resolved.
      
      The polls won't let me edit them without losing info it says. When I opened one to edit it the entire opening module of the article moved to the bottom of the page and rearranged the entire article (I didn't do a thing).  Yikes!
      
      I fixed it and clicked done editing. Checked it and the entire page was gone - blank. I went back into editing and it was there, clicked again, gone.  This happened for hours until I finally shut it down.  Today I haven't been able to do much because the same thing is happening just doing simple changes.
      
      Having the old site up allows me to go get original info and the photos or videos.  Without those most of my articles are pretty much done for and of no use.  So, I'm a bit frustrated.
      
      As you already know, time is the main thing which those having hundreds of articles can tell you we're short on.  I feel bad and don't want to sound ungrateful for the courtesy that has been shown, I just wish I was better at solving computer issues. Thanks for asking.

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4. 83

   JanieceTobeyposted 10 years ago

   Hi Favored,
   I agree that having some more time to access the "edit" section of our Squidoo dashboards would be wonderful and so very helpful!  Like you, even though I copied all my lenses and stored the files on my computer, I can't get the HTML for the links via those stored files.  I need to be able to "edit" a module in order to get that link info.  Quite a few of my links and videos didn't transfer, and it's going to take me considerable longer if I have to re-look everything up on the web, rather than just find the info hidden in the edit mode of each lens on my dashboard.  (Quite a few of my videos were just links.  I spent a long time researching which videos to include though, back when I first created each lens.  Quite a few of my lens-hubs are educational, and I wanted to put youtubes on the lens which would be educational for the kids to watch.  None of those links transferred...and it will take hours to rewatch youtubes again to find new ones to include, if I can't locate the old ones.)
   
   For those who wonder what's taking us so long: In addition to the links and videos that didn't transfer, most of my photos were turned off.  One photo I found on my lens-hub yesterday was turned sideways. By that I mean you had to turn your head sideways to look at it!  (I have to admit that I was grateful that that one had been turned off!)  Our sources, URL's, and captions have to be added to the photos.  Many of my photos have to be re-uploaded because they had been at a smaller size on Squidoo (via html formatting), and when they were uploaded into my hubs, the size was increased, making them blurry.  We have to add summaries, as that wasn't a part of lens-making on Squidoo.  There's just all kinds of time consuming things we have to do to most of our transferred hubs...and although I'm spending as much time as I possibly can doing it, it takes time.
   
   I was supposed to go camping with my husband this weekend, but decided I'd really better stay home and work on my transferred hubs instead.  Of course, after opting to stay home and work over the weekend instead of taking the vacation we'd planned, the site was down part of the weekend, and the photos weren't functioning correctly, so I didn't get nearly as much done over the weekend as I'd hoped.
   
   Favored, earlier today, before I saw your post here on HP, I added a comment on the last post we got from Corey on Squidoo, hoping he'd see it.  Have you tried posting there?  I'm not sure if Corey is still checking the comments on that post or not.
   
   If  we do lose our dashboards on Oct 1, one option may be to get the link info from the source code of our saved files, but that will take a lot longer too.  It'd be so nice if Squidoo could just let us keep our dashboards a few more weeks...
   
   Best of luck!  I hope things go well for you and me and everyone else!

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      favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Janiece it's good to see you here. Your educational articles I know took a lot of time and have been very helpful.  I'm sorry you gave up your weekend, hopefully that won't have to happen in the future. 
      
      My husband's health has been foremost in my thinking trying to keep people informed and this has added to it  Plus the fact that many don't want us here really makes you feel like the step-child in Cinderella. It sounds like we're a bunch of complainers when all we're trying to do is salvage hard work.
      
      Surely this will be solved soon and we can all work together in a peaceful atmosphere.  Until then I guess we'll have to keep asking until someone listens

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   Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years ago

   Hi favored,
   
   you are really up against it time wise but you still have a few hours to get some stuff if you are quick.
   
   I recommend this:
   
   Go to your Squidoo dashboard
   Go to Edit for the lens you want to get the info from
   In your browser (preferably firefox or chrome) go to File >> Save page as >> Format: web page, complete
   You will get two files: an html file which you can open in your browser or in an html editor; and a folder of assets which will have all your images
   
   What I have also done with my lenses is to copy everything and put it into a blogger post in draft. Then I can see what's there, see the code, strip out the extraneous Squidoo code, replace images hosted on the Squidoo server with those from the folder I previously saved and then once it's spruced up decide where it is going to go; hubpages or somewhere else

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      favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Elle-Dee-Esse can I save it on blogger and never post it removing info as I work through it?  Wouldn't that make it duplicate content?

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         Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Be sure to save the web page complete as well as saving to blogger. Blogger will import the current url for your images which is the squidoo hosted url unless you were using your own img src code

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      favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Elle-Dee-Esse can I save it on blogger and never post it removing info as I work through it?  Wouldn't that make it duplicate content?

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         Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         It isn't duplicate until it is published
         
         I have over 120 draft articles on blogger right now. I deleted all bar a few lenses and migrated only what I wanted to go to hubpages. Those I am placing on hubpages I vet on blogger first, then create the hub, then delete the draft blog post

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            relacheposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            The filters can be tripped by duplicate content during Hub creation.

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               Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               I may have misunderstood but I thought she was asking about drafts on blogger

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   3. 83

      JanieceTobeyposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      How do we open the saved Squidoo files in an HTML editor?  Will Notepad work? (That's what I usually use when I need to write an HTML document.)

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         Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Yes Janiece, I right click on the file and choose TextEdit (the Mac equivalent of Notepad)

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   makingamarkposted 10 years ago

   If you use Safari for the "save as webpage" then you get live links throughout the document. Just save it to a new folder on your computer and you get an archive page.
   
   It gives the best result of all the different browsers as the page looks like and acts like the page it saved.
   
   However most of us spent days and days doing this in August. I really don't understand why you're having to do this now.

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      JanieceTobeyposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      On Firefox, which is what I used to save all my Squidoo files,  the saved files look just like the Squidoo lens did, and the links are live too, as long as I have the internet turned on.  I was assuming that everything was great and that I had all the info I needed, until another Squidoo lensmaster pointed out that we can only "edit" those downloaded files we saved (to get the HTML)  as long as Squidoo exists (in terms of our dashboards). 
      
      He said that the downloaded files that look just like our Squidoo lenses actually go to our dashboards when we click on edit in order to open an individual module.  I turned off my internet and gave it a try, and found out he was right.
      
      Maybe it's not true for Safari?  I have no idea.  I've got firefox, IE, and Chrome, but will download Safari if that's what I need to do.  Are you sure though that you are actually able to "edit" one of your saved files without it taking you to Squidoo?  If so, I'll download Safari!

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      Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I suspect the OP believed the 'save' option would be suitable but has since discovered she no longer has her images.
      
      I also suspect there may be many other former lensmasters out there who are not in the facebook communities or have been away from Squidoo who have also lost much of their content.

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      favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      makingamark I did copy the files weeks ago as well, but they don't show the edit form. I don't have Safari or a MAC.  Appreciate the information.

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         Valerie P Davisposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Go to the Wayback Machine and view the articles as they were on Squidoo:
         http://archive.org/web/

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            Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Unfortunately it hasn't captured every lens which I discovered when hubpages tipped me off to a site which had stolen the content from one of my lenses

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         Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         You don't need a Mac to save the complete web page using the method I described. If you are using Firefox or Chrome you can still do it

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   Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years ago

   

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   Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years ago

   

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   Elle-Dee-Esseposted 10 years ago

   These are the files that you will have
   
   
   When you open the .html file in your browser you will see the page as it would appear on the web. The difference is that the url in your address bar will be the file path to the location of the document on your hard drive. The links however will all be there.
   
   When you open the file in an html editor you will see the code. Right click on the file then there will some kind of option to choose which application to open it with. I use TextEdit, you will use something like Notepad:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

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      favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you Elle-Dee-Esse I'll try this. Appreciate it more than you can imagine

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    makingamarkposted 10 years ago

    Hi Favored - thanks for writing to me offline.
    
    Given your explanation I think - in the circumstances - you'd be well advised to approach the HubPages Team and explain privately the reason why you have this problem and ask if they can advise when access to the Squidoo site will be switched off.

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    relacheposted 10 years ago

    According to a post made by Corey Brown on October 4th, the Squidoo site is slated to be taken down by the end of this very week.
    
    http://hq.squidoo.com/squid-news/an-upd … -schedule/

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       favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       I wish they would reconsider.  There are too many issues still to be resolved with the transfer.

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    shellys-spaceposted 10 years ago

    favored: How many more lenses do you need to update? Without using the Squidoo dashboard to fall back on, most of my transferred pages would have been difficult to update.

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       favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       Shelly I have about 140.  I was just going to contact you and ask about your affiliate ones.  Mine are about done, can't figure out how to make them work or my TK niche.  The whole theme thing for them will be gone as well as my Daily Favor blog book of the week.  Any suggestions?
       
       Without the dashboard I'm pretty much at a stand still unless I delete all the work I've created.

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          JanieceTobeyposted 10 years agoin reply to this

          I don't know if this will help you any or not...as we all have different situations...but today I went through the offline files of most of the lens-hubs I haven't yet updated on HP and just quickly checked for links (on callout modules or big arrow links, etc).  I made a list of the lens-hubs I found those on, so I can go back and get the URL's of those links before the site goes down tomorrow. (I would have just copied the URL's right then, but I was away from an internet connection and was wanting to get something done on my pages anyway.  If  link URL's or missing images on callout modules are something of concern to you, maybe you could do the same?  My suggestion is that you not take the time to edit all the pages now, as you probably don't have time.  Just gather the main info from Squidoo that you need, whatever that may be, and store it on your computer to add to your lens-hubs as time permits.
          
          Best of luck!
          Janiece

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             favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

             Thank you Janiece, I know you have the same concerns.  Trying to get done what I can with the few hours I have each day.  The affiliate pages and recipes are a biggies. 
             
             Hubby started PR this week so we're away from home a lot and they frown on using the computers in the clinic   God will work it out, I can't stress over this.

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    shellys-spaceposted 10 years ago

    favored: Send me an e-mail if you can't figure it out. With the 2 link per domain rule, it has been a challenge, but I have all but one Hub left to do. Again, I deleted a lot of lenses and moved them to my 4 websites. I downloaded all the content from  Squidoo, had to go through each lens ## and rename them. That was a lot of work as they did not have a title when you download them, only a ##.
    
    You can take a peek at one of my Hubs if that would help you.

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       favoredposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       Shelly sent you an email.  Give me a link to a good example of what you have been able to do.

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    shellys-spaceposted 10 years ago

    favored: Got the message and reply was just sent.

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