4 ms·

Founder here, happy to field questions and feedback! Right now PageDash is quite a simple product, but hopefully with sufficient traction we can continue to im

Founder here, happy to field questions and feedback! Right now PageDash is quite a simple product, but hopefully with sufficient traction we can continue to implement things like full-text search, tagging support, link sharing, as well as mobile support. Your support is absolutely crucial to making PageDash come alive even more in the future. This is my first product, thank you for being nice :)

gooseus 9y ago
Dig it, got some questions... Is the data stored exclusively on your Google Cloud or can I see my archived pages while offline and backup my web archive locally? Essentially, what guarantees do I have regarding access to my data should your startup, my local infrastructure, or civilization collapse?
- ernsheong 9y ago
  Right now PageDash is centrally hosted on Google Cloud, although if there is sufficient demand I would consider a locally-hosted licensing model and bring your own S3/GCP Storage bucket, or maybe even open source. Your question is very valid and right now all I can say is PageDash aims to provide a way for you to retrieve your data either via direct downloads or bucket syncing for the technically inclined. Essentially each page is simply a folder with all the assets stored in a flat structure, so there is no fancy tech here. Once the page is processed and archived, it's a done deal. My personal guarantee is that as long as someone is paying and PageDash is not going hugely red I will keep the service up. The free quota is meant as a trial and you can help keep PageDash up by subscribing :) Cloud brings other benefits such as the ability to retrieve from anywhere, as well as use multiple clients. But yes, I can understand the concern, it is a valid one.
  - gooseus 9y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't think your product, as it is, provides enough value for the cost. I would suggest using the WARC format someone else mentioned as well as providing a mechanism for backing up locally and a guarantee that all data will be available for X weeks/months/years following any buyout or failure of the business. Good luck!
  - dwg 9y ago
    Love what you guys did wish PageDash. Archiving locally is perhaps the main reason why I'm paying Evernote and not PageDash, however. However, I've never been happy with the way Evernote tries to be a filing system and I like the simplicity of PageDash. That said If I'm going to invest time to archive I would like to know that the effort won't be wasted if you go out of business.
CJKinni 9y ago
Would it be possible to add auto-archiving to the extension? On the $9/mo plan, I'd probably still not hit 100GB/mo of uploads. My main reason for wanting this feature is that I could use the full text search (when it's available) to search every webpage I've visited. I find myself more and more frequently unable to find things I know existed at one point. I've been thinking of building my own solution where I just archive every page I visit on the fly then build a personal search for pages I've previously visited.
- ernsheong 9y ago
  Hi there, I actually know someone else who wants this feature. I feel like most of the sites out there are "junk", i.e. things that are not worth saving. So just save the gems. But that's me. My feelings aside, technically this would be rather hard to do as it stands because saving a page is quite costly, i.e. mainly: 1) data retrieval, 2) data upload will cause you to not be able to use the internet seamlessly as PageDash will stall things. For some reason, even though the assets are already in the browser, PageDash as an extension cannot retrieve it directly. Also the extension right now over-mines, i.e. retrieves way more than what is actually needed to render the page, just because there's a lot of dead CSS/JS/images links out there, and I haven't figured out a way to make it more efficient. However, if all you care about is the HTML (which is essentially what full-text searches search), then this is technically possible, but the result won't be pretty. But auto-save is technically and realistically possible if you only care about the HTML.
  - ernsheong 9y ago
    Chrome does support keyboard shortcuts, though. Go to chrome://extensions/, look for "Keyboard shortcuts" at the bottom right, and configure away for a quick save :)
- kbyatnal 9y ago
  Check this out - seems to do what you want. https://github.com/lengstrom/falcon https://github.com/lengstrom/falcon "Chrome extension for flexible full text browsing history search. Every time you visit a website in Chrome, Falcon indexes all the text on the page so that the site can be easily found later."

gooseus 9y ago

Dig it, got some questions... Is the data stored exclusively on your Google Cloud or can I see my archived pages while offline and backup my web archive locally? Essentially, what guarantees do I have regarding access to my data should your startup, my local infrastructure, or civilization collapse?

ernsheong 9y ago
Right now PageDash is centrally hosted on Google Cloud, although if there is sufficient demand I would consider a locally-hosted licensing model and bring your own S3/GCP Storage bucket, or maybe even open source. Your question is very valid and right now all I can say is PageDash aims to provide a way for you to retrieve your data either via direct downloads or bucket syncing for the technically inclined. Essentially each page is simply a folder with all the assets stored in a flat structure, so there is no fancy tech here. Once the page is processed and archived, it's a done deal. My personal guarantee is that as long as someone is paying and PageDash is not going hugely red I will keep the service up. The free quota is meant as a trial and you can help keep PageDash up by subscribing :) Cloud brings other benefits such as the ability to retrieve from anywhere, as well as use multiple clients. But yes, I can understand the concern, it is a valid one.
- gooseus 9y ago
  I'm sorry, I don't think your product, as it is, provides enough value for the cost. I would suggest using the WARC format someone else mentioned as well as providing a mechanism for backing up locally and a guarantee that all data will be available for X weeks/months/years following any buyout or failure of the business. Good luck!
- dwg 9y ago
  Love what you guys did wish PageDash. Archiving locally is perhaps the main reason why I'm paying Evernote and not PageDash, however. However, I've never been happy with the way Evernote tries to be a filing system and I like the simplicity of PageDash. That said If I'm going to invest time to archive I would like to know that the effort won't be wasted if you go out of business.

CJKinni 9y ago

Would it be possible to add auto-archiving to the extension? On the $9/mo plan, I'd probably still not hit 100GB/mo of uploads. My main reason for wanting this feature is that I could use the full text search (when it's available) to search every webpage I've visited. I find myself more and more frequently unable to find things I know existed at one point. I've been thinking of building my own solution where I just archive every page I visit on the fly then build a personal search for pages I've previously visited.

ernsheong 9y ago
Hi there, I actually know someone else who wants this feature. I feel like most of the sites out there are "junk", i.e. things that are not worth saving. So just save the gems. But that's me. My feelings aside, technically this would be rather hard to do as it stands because saving a page is quite costly, i.e. mainly: 1) data retrieval, 2) data upload will cause you to not be able to use the internet seamlessly as PageDash will stall things. For some reason, even though the assets are already in the browser, PageDash as an extension cannot retrieve it directly. Also the extension right now over-mines, i.e. retrieves way more than what is actually needed to render the page, just because there's a lot of dead CSS/JS/images links out there, and I haven't figured out a way to make it more efficient. However, if all you care about is the HTML (which is essentially what full-text searches search), then this is technically possible, but the result won't be pretty. But auto-save is technically and realistically possible if you only care about the HTML.
- ernsheong 9y ago
  Chrome does support keyboard shortcuts, though. Go to chrome://extensions/, look for "Keyboard shortcuts" at the bottom right, and configure away for a quick save :)
kbyatnal 9y ago
Check this out - seems to do what you want. https://github.com/lengstrom/falcon https://github.com/lengstrom/falcon "Chrome extension for flexible full text browsing history search. Every time you visit a website in Chrome, Falcon indexes all the text on the page so that the site can be easily found later."