I have multiple G+ Communities which were created for work tasks and functions under my personal account before my...
I have multiple G+ Communities which were created for work tasks and functions under my personal account before my organization joined G Suite for Education. I have been trying and trying to figure out how to get the ownership of the content switched to my work account, or alternatively to export and upload the data into a new community owned by the correct account. I've walked through the export process multiple times, but am still waiting on the download links from Google. I understand that can take a while, but for one of them it should be super tiny — a custom export just for one small mission-critical community page. I've been digging around online for info about how to do this, and I've also worked through our org's IT support folk (again multiple times). I must be missing something, right? I found a lot of discussion of tools to import the data to other places(MeWe, LifeCloud, Wordpress, Blogger, Medium, ...) but I don't see a criteria tool to help with a decision about which to use and why. Frankly, since my organization will still have access to G+, I'm not understanding why we can't just keep it there. Evidently, there used to be a way to change ownership of G+ Community pages, but the link is to a page that no longer exists.
If all else fails, and if the contents of the communities are not large, you can open each one (one by one, not all at the same time) into a Firefox tab, scroll all the way to the end of the community and also make sure that all the community posts and comments are unrolled (no "..."), then save off the community page onto your hard drive.
ReplyDeleteWhen you open the page from your hard drive it will look pretty much the way it originally did, and the links will still work. What won't work, of course, are photos that you uploaded into the posts and comments, and links to Google+ photos.
Chrome won't do this, but I'm having great success using Firefox. It's worth giving it a go, with your smallest community first, but if you do it do check that when you open the saved-off pages they still look the same and still work in the way that you want.
PF Anderson You can add a G Suite G+ user as owner to the Community to preserve the community itself, but all non-G Suite user content will disappear after April 2, 2019.
ReplyDeleteThe Friends+Me Google+ Exporter and Romain Vialard's Firebase script are your best bets for creating archives of Community content.
This guide, though directed at mobile users, may be useful:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/afhf8h/data_export_options_for_mobile_users/
Stay tuned to this page, though it needs work:
https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Migrating_Google%2B_Communities
Marysia Kurowski Thanks for the tip. Google has never sent me the export I requested, and I suspect they won't. Even though we are an official Google partner, we have not found them responsive to concerns, and this is definitely falling into that category. Saving the page is better than nothing, and I can still share it with the team for archival access for our publications.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius Thanks so much! I've been collecting all sorts of resources that have been recommended for this, and you just mentioned some I hadn't found yet. I'm thinking of assembling a blogpost of content I've scraped from this forum, just to make it easier for me to find all in one place. And maybe get some comments from people who've actually tried more than one of these. Much appreciated!
ReplyDeletePF Anderson #PlexodusWiki (https://social.antefriguserat.de) is such a resource.
ReplyDeleteFeel free to add content there or drop me a line at dredmorbius protonmail com when you've got something.
Edward Morbius Appreciated! Just heard from our institution that they've worked with Google to find a solution, and are about to push the information out to all of us at UofM. I think it might make sense to wait for that, but ... if I get twitchy and nervous I might go ahead.
ReplyDeletePF Anderson University of Michigan, I assume?
ReplyDeleteLMK if you have any specific questions, again, email is a good option.
Edward Morbius Indeed, University of Michigan. And thanks again for the link to the wonderful wiki! Sharing it with the folk here.
ReplyDeletePF Anderson Parts of that are better than others, I'm trying to address some of the weaker content in the final weeks here.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius Our IT folk just explained to me what you meant when you said "but all non-G Suite user content will disappear after April 2, 2019." The link to the community will remain a viable link, but any content or posts or conversations in the community from persons who are not part of a G-Suite organization will disappear. Or is it that all content not from the owning G Suite organization will disappear? I am astounded and absolutely horrified. I completely did not understand that was what you meant.
ReplyDeleteThey also explained to me that the export options from Google ONLY provide links to the original posts, not the actual content of the posts (which is really stupid and almost completely useless). What a huge bunch of brainless idiots are they? They are trying to rebrand this as a tool for collaboration just for the special G Suite folk, but they are completely destroying the options for boundary spanning collaborations which is at the heart of modern science, research, and scholarly innovation. I have little use for a collaboration tool limited to the organization which employees me.
I'll be sending you an email about export / back up tools. I have so many deadlines coming up, and I've been spending so much time on this. What a nightmare.
Edward Morbius From what I saw in Romain's tool you recommended, Google is shutting down the API to migrate content on March 7th! I would not have had a clue how little time was left to solve this if you hadn't directed me there.
ReplyDeletePF Anderson Yes: After April 2, 2019, any posts or comments by users not having a G Suite account will be deleted from the community.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens to content from users with G Suite accounts but not in the Community owner's G Suite domain is ... less clear. I suspect it will be retained, but that the out-of-domain G Suite users may not be able to access it. That will depend on Community settings.
There are several options for exporting Google+ Community content.
Presently, the best of these are probably the Friends+ Me Google+ Exporter (F+MGE) and Romain Vialard's Firebase script.
The F+MGE works by "web scraping" content, using your Google authentication, from a locally-run process (that is, from your laptop or desktop), using an Electron app -- effectively Javascript running within a Google Chrome self-contained engine.
Vialard's script works using the Google+ API which will be discontinued on March 7.
The F+MGE process can run after that date but may miss some content. The Firebase script is likely to be more comprehensive but you have less than one week to make use of it.
F+MGE can export directly to Blogger or Wordpress, or create a JSON archive which can be ported to several other platforms.
The Firebase script works only with Google Firebase, but you may be able to run further exports from there, and you will buy some time.
There are further third-party options.
LifeCloud will create live forum sites based on Google+ Community content, with an import tool: https://www.lifecloud.site/GooglePlusDataImporter https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/aiubub/google_data_importer_beta_import_your_google/
WikiFactory are similarly doing live community imports: https://wikifactory.com/@carolportugal/stories/wikifactory-forum-for-digital-fabrication-communities-on-google?fbclid=IwAR1bw8I8d0zpkKA-E3yLB1F12UqHspH0_b0nK8KkiJNOyUrqNuMQL-XIHz0 https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/alfhry/wikifactory_forum_for_digital_fabrication/
PashPost is another recently announced option, see: https://plus.google.com/107459505684202564620/posts/3iLtpDyEPtC
GitLab has been used: https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/akwg1s/herculien_and_eustathios_builders_community/
PF Anderson Ayup WRT tight timelines.
ReplyDeleteThis is a dumpster fire.
Edward Morbius Sorry to ping you again. Do you know if the Google+ Exporter died early? I haven't been able to get a JSON export (some of the data comes as JSON, but the posts still come as HTML). I decided to go ahead and try it anyway, but wanted to test the free version before I paid. It has me log in to Google, then says it can't find a Plus account, has me log in again to my Plus account. The Plus account flashes on screen, and then switches back to the app, which tries to get in, fails, and repeats the cycle. It's possible that our hospital firewall may be a problem.So I'm going to try relocating elsewhere, just in case, but I can't do that for a couple hours.
ReplyDelete:-O
ReplyDeletePF Anderson Which? Google Data Takeout or the Friends+Me Google+ Exporter? Both should work.
ReplyDeleteFor the former, desribe problems here and/or at the Google+ Help community.
For the latter, ping Alois Bělaška.
Edward Morbius Friends+Me Google+ Exporter. I reported the problem this afternoon, and he updated the app this evening, and it is WORKING NOW!
ReplyDeleteGoogle Data Takeout has not been particularly helpful at any point. I did succeed in getting the export files, however the posts is only a list of links to the data that will be erased on April 2nd. I don't see the point to that. Also, no matter how many times I requested JSON export, it kept giving me HTML for the posts file.
But I don't have to fight with Takeout anymore. I have Friends+Me. Almost shattered with relief. It's slow, and I haven't exported everything I'd like to get, but I did get the most important G+ Community with all our research process. Hallelujah!