Jus to nitpick a little bit: The BA logo "doodle" doesn't seem to show up on the database.

Surely the blank 15th user can't be intentional.

Oh, seems some old sins are coming back to bite me. Thanks for letting me know, I will try to fix this over time as it requires some rehashing of checksums etc.

Maybe related to the "blank 15th user" bug but...

Latest listed updates are for 10/27/18.

Also searching for "media" returns 0 results.

That's because a full DB reindex is in progress...

The various counters in the search results seem to be confused:

Your search returned more than 100 rows. We have limited the results ... to 1000.

Yet, 123 results are shown....

Badly worded, but it's by design. If it's got over 100 results we tell you this and then limit it to 1000 maximum. Your search gave 123 results total.

Why not show the top line only if the 1000 row limit is reached and stylize the "consider refining your search" notice more like a balloon under the filter box?

The idea is to try and encourage you to refine your search. Who wants to look through 100 or even 1000 results?

I should have expressed myself more clearly

If the search returns more than 100 rows, then I think something like a balloon tooltip that would advise the user to refine their search, which could be dismissable, could be shown under the filter box with the "arrowhead" pointing towards it. The 1000 row limit notice would appear only if the limit was actually hit.

I know the BetaArchive database has been up for a while now, and I know it's still under construction (in beta), but may I ask if you will eventually be adding the original BetaArchive layout on the database page (the layout with the white content and the blue title bar)? Just wondering. And may I also suggest adding the database page to the navigation bar so that people could get to that page easier? Other than that, nice feature for BetaArchive

How is it not "the original BetaArchive layout"?


According to what Andy said on the Discord, the navigation bar is bound to be reworked. The database is going to be added to the navigation bar as soon as that is done.

It sort of is, the content is fine, but the title bar is grayish white instead of blue, like it usually is on this site. I'm talking about this:

Original title bar:


Database page title bar:


But I might get it, because as the title implies, the database is still in development, so maybe the blue theme will eventually be added to the title bar on the database page.


Okay. I can't to see it

This is less of a Suggestion, and more a Question, but it could end up being a Suggestion depending on the answer that I get.

What filesystem does your FTP Server use? Is it NTFS, ReFS, or something else? Because if it's NTFS, I'd suggest switching over to ReFS if possible, in order to maximize reliability. Alternatively, if you use a non-Windows operating system for the FTP server, then you could conceivably give ZFS a try. It's a really freaking good filesystem, especially for reliable storage.

Even since it's not a database question and should be in its own topic I will answer.

We use NTFS at the moment, but over time it will be switched to ReFS. ZFS is not an option because of the out of this world memory requirements, we rely heavily on deduplication, and the memory requirements of ZFS deduplicating a 100TB volume far exceeds the resources we have available. From what I have learned you need approximately 20GB RAM for every TB of data you want to deduplicate, that would mean we would need a server with 2TB of RAM. That's about 8 times more RAM than we have now, and the hardware required (motherboard, CPUs and RAM itself) would be astronomically expensive. In this regard Microsoft is far better at this, albeit with slower performance. And the switch to ReFS will take time because I have to copy deduplicate almost 100TB of data across a 32TB volume which is very time consuming and can't be automated, all of this while still keeping the FTP open and maintained with backups. The last repack of the FTP took almost 8 months to do, moving everything to ReFS will take 2-3 months minimum, and that is after I've purchased the hardware needed, something I am not prepared to do at this moment.

I would add info how to connect from the console ftp, as the SSL may be difficult for non-experienced user (and, for example, I had no other option than upload via commandline):

Example (line 2 and 3 are most problematic for average user):

username@server$ lftp ftps://upload:upload@releases.betaarchive.com:50000

lftp upload@releases.betaarchive.com:~> set ssl:verify-certificate false
lftp upload@releases.betaarchive.com:~> set ftp:ssl-protect-data true

lftp upload@releases.betaarchive.com:~> mkdir forum_username
lftp upload@releases.betaarchive.com:~> cd forum_username
lftp upload@releases.betaarchive.com:~> put xxx_yyy_zzz.rar
lftp upload@releases.betaarchive.com:~> mkdir Completed
lftp upload@releases.betaarchive.com:~> bye

Best,
Lukasz

Suggestion : I think it will be better if i can exclude releases that I have checked. Or, I think it will be better if i can select if its a beta, and pick a codename, and language.

You can refine and search multiple keywords such as the codename or beta by separating search terms with a comma.

Excluding releases you have checked would defeat the point of the database and would be difficult to achieve from a programming perspective. In the future I could look at having a different colour link for URLs already visited as this is a browser feature and would require little in the way of programming.

A more advanced search will be developed where you will be able to include or exclude certain categories and keywords etc, but that requires a significant amount of code and time from Andy's busy schedule, but something to look forward too! .

I found that if the text in search box include "[" with form like this for example:



The search result will report many error:



And search result just displays date, uploader and size.

That's a big, thanks for reporting. We'll fix it in the next update.

This issue has been fixed.

I have a few more suggestions for the database (unless you're already planning on doing my following ideas when the final version is out, as the database is still in beta). My suggestions actually have to do with search, filter, and sort methods. These ideas mostly apply to the leaderboard page.

1. You could add a feature where you can filter releases to just a certain letter by selecting a letter from the alphabet (buttons containing letters in alphabetical order).

2. A sort method feature where you can sort releases in alphabetical order, same for uploader names, and you can make it ascend from A to Z, or descend from Z to A.

3. An option where you can sort releases by file size, you can have it ascend from smallest to largest, or descend from largest to smallest.

4. Another sorting option where you can sort by the years the releases were uploaded.

Just an idea, because I know how Andy is sometimes like when it comes to suggestions from other people.

We're looking at implementing a more advanced search in future, along with different ways to browse the releases.

As for ascending largest to smallest or A-Z you can already do this, just click the column header of the column you want to sort.

Huh, neat.

Speaking of which, I decided to show a little example of what I'm talking about with this "sort method" suggestion, instead of having me babble a bunch of nonsense that may be hard to tell with words,

[click to enlarge]