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tiddlyhost blogWhat happened to Tiddlyspot?
posted by simon on Saturday, October 24, 2020
Dreamhost moved the entirety of the site data to a "DreamObject" backup storage and hence it's no longer online.
Their reasoning for doing that is that Tiddlyspot site consists of "personal backups" and hence violates their terms of use. I presume this is because the "backups" folder stores previous versions of your TiddlyWiki.
(There was also a bug where the number of site backups would sometimes grow unbounded rather than being pruned down to a fixed number of revisions. So there is a reasonable case for Dreamhost to be annoyed by that.)
Bad News
The future of Tiddlyspot is unclear. I'll need to negotiate with Dreamhost and I'm not sure how communicative they're going to be. Maybe if we agree to remove all the site backups Dreamhost would put it back how it was, but I don't expect it to be done quickly.
Good News
Your site data is presumably safe and sound in a DreamObject, so if for some reason the Tiddlyspot version was your only copy there's a good chance it can be recovered.
Question?
Tiddlyspot was pretty cool back when it was new, but it has aged badly and (I'll confess) been neglected by its owners for many years. For this reason, the idea of gently retiring Tiddlyspot has been considered. Maybe we'll hang on to the domain name for when/if Daniel & I come up with a new, modern, secure version of Tiddlyspot. That said, I don't have a good sense of how many people are using it actively now and how many would miss it if it were gone. So, if you are seriously impacted by Tiddlyspot being unavailable, please let me know how and why.
Update, Oct 25: I have a support ticket open at Dreamhost to request access to the data. The ticket number is #9255564.
Their reasoning for doing that is that Tiddlyspot site consists of "personal backups" and hence violates their terms of use. I presume this is because the "backups" folder stores previous versions of your TiddlyWiki.
(There was also a bug where the number of site backups would sometimes grow unbounded rather than being pruned down to a fixed number of revisions. So there is a reasonable case for Dreamhost to be annoyed by that.)
Bad News
The future of Tiddlyspot is unclear. I'll need to negotiate with Dreamhost and I'm not sure how communicative they're going to be. Maybe if we agree to remove all the site backups Dreamhost would put it back how it was, but I don't expect it to be done quickly.
Good News
Your site data is presumably safe and sound in a DreamObject, so if for some reason the Tiddlyspot version was your only copy there's a good chance it can be recovered.
Question?
Tiddlyspot was pretty cool back when it was new, but it has aged badly and (I'll confess) been neglected by its owners for many years. For this reason, the idea of gently retiring Tiddlyspot has been considered. Maybe we'll hang on to the domain name for when/if Daniel & I come up with a new, modern, secure version of Tiddlyspot. That said, I don't have a good sense of how many people are using it actively now and how many would miss it if it were gone. So, if you are seriously impacted by Tiddlyspot being unavailable, please let me know how and why.
Update, Oct 25: I have a support ticket open at Dreamhost to request access to the data. The ticket number is #9255564.
Update, Feb 19: Re a new, modern, secure version of Tiddlyspot, see "Announcing Tiddlyhost.com".
posted by simon at Saturday, October 24, 2020
53 Comments:
Hi Simon, many years ago I created two Tiddlyspot wikis: pogarell.mptw since March 2008 and pogarell since March 2015. The pogarell-wiki is more a playground using TW5, but pogarell.mptw based on Classic TW is some kind of my personal knowledge base. I had it more or less often in active use with some changes even the very last days.
Of course I made regulary local backups once a month, but according to Murphy's Law my last backup was 26 days ago.
The information I stored in Tiddlyspot is not sensitve or mission critical at all, but I always appreciated it, to have such a tool at hand accessible from various devices at any time at any place (being online).
Thank you very much for having Tiddlyspot around all the years. Hopefully Tiddlyspot will be back, maybe newly born. It would be great, if there would be the possibility to get the latest version of pogarell.mptw.
All the best and kind regards
Gerhard
I am really saddened with the demise of Tiddlyspot. Our Family History Center used is often until the pandemic hit. It was our go to list of links and research information. Unfortunately, we don't have a recent backup for sonorafhc.
I first used tiddlyspot 3 years ago to show my boss how i managed the Open Archive project of our University (a small french one). Then i take the bad habbit of working on the tiddlyspot version. My last local version is 6 months old... Let us know when and how we will be able to get the latest version of the data.
Thanks for having made tiddlyspot of course, you're not responsible of the lack of backup I have :)
(I also have a professional personal notebook on tiddlyspot, but the data are less important there)
Sorry for oversharing but the thought of suddenly losing my second brain induced a literal panic attack. Being able to access the flexible framework of TW easily on any device has been a godsend for navigating through the chaos of my executive dysfunction and ADHD.
My personal wiki aside, what will happen to all the wonderful documentation and plugins, many of which have been hosted on tiddlyspot to my knowledge?
I (and many others I'm sure) have been so so grateful for the service tiddlyspot provides.
If there is any chance for things to go back to the way it was, I'm praying they will.
Kindest Wishes
~K
I to share in thanking the creators for making this free option which I have heavily used, right up until the moment it was deactivated. I have been trying to communicate with dreamboat to see what has become of my data.
Lol dreamboat. Clearly I meant DreamHost.
I am affected, I love it and would miss it!
I use it daily in 8 of my projects.
I have a script that makes a backup when I update them, and have a fresh copy from this week.I have already worked today on my copies
Hope all is well with you and we can use the best site on the world soon again.
Thanks, Simon
I use it daily in my projects.
Thanks, Sergey
I've got at least three projects, two of which I work on regularly that I'd like to get back. I don't have recent off-site copies of these so if I can get them back that'd be great.
Hi,
Any way to recover backup? I really don't have a recent backup :(
Should I contact dreamhost?
Please advise.
I use tiddlyspot to take notes when I watch lecture videos. Would really appreciate a recent backup if possible. Thanks for making tiddlyspot!
Hi. Thanks for your work on this. I had an active site on there and there were also lots of useful plugins which i used.
Hi. Thanks for your work on this. I had an active site on there and there were also lots of useful plugins which i used.
Hi Simon,
I did use tiddlyspot quite a bit to showcase "proof of concepts", to support github isssues and GG help requests.
I don't know, how many wikis I did create only to link them into the google groups as a reference implementation, to help other users.
I think, it would be sad, if all those links are broken. IMO in GG there will be thousands of them.
What is needed, to get the page up and running again?
If there should be financial support, I think we could raise some money to get it started again. ... You will need time and I think this time should be paid.
regards Mario
Thanks for running this service. Unfortunately, I did lose a lot with the DreamHost changes. All my personal writing and RPG resources were up there. I didn't even think to save a local copy.
I am sure that quite a lot TiddlyWiki have used tiddlyspot.com service. It really contained dozen of resources full of information. From my experience with TiddlyWiki 8 out of 10 chances were that I find a site hosted on Tiddlyspot.com to a Wiki that I can either download a plugin from or study how it was designed.
This was only my "public" view of things. However, I am sure that there is quite a lot of affected users that used the service privately, with no public links. Losing their information or their "second brain" could be really traumatic experience to them. Backups of course is the responsibility of each of us, users of the service, however chances are many including myself have taken the service for granted and haven't made a recent copy or local backup of the data. Making TiddlySpot the only place with the latest information, if not the only one. TiddlySpot provided the convenience to be able to access a single HTML file from any device, at any point of the world as long as you had internet access. It would be private if no one knows the link. It really was an unique easy to use service that was huge convenience and augmentation of using TiddlyWiki in a person's private life.
I remember I was recently using the service, saved my changes (which weren't mission crucial for me and of which I don't back copy of). Only to wake up exactly on the next morning and look for them and then see that Tiddlyspot is gone. I was shocked, despite the fact that my information wasn't of significant importance. I do not want to imagine what a person who used the service as a "second brain" would feel when they woke up to see the same scenario.
I am trying to write this on behalf of many users who do not know how to contact you to let you know in first place. Many that I probably don't know that exist, but can assume it from being online around TiddlyWiki's community. Including those who may be shy to contact in first place as well. Everyone's wiki and data is important to each of them personally. It may not have any value to anyone else but to the author. Each of us is at fault for taking the service for granted, because of the ease of use and convenience that it provided, because it satisfied a lot of the personal needs with such simple and easy way.
I would like to ask of you to consider attempting to bring the service back. However if that is not possible.... Please at least allow a way for people who know their wiki address, including their private wikis only for their eyes to have access to their latest data for download. Even if such convenient service as tiddlyspot can no longer exist for any reason. The personal wikis, the information of everyone is very important to every person who had created it.
Thank you very much on behalf of everyone who cannot contact you. For providing and maintaining TiddlySpot alive for so many years. Long before I could know TiddlyWiki and become a user of TiddlySpot myself. TiddlySpot will remain a really convenient memory of how people used to write their personal wikis on any devices, making TiddlyWiki even more convenient and easy to use.
Contacting dreamhost won't work. I've already tried it. essentially the creators of tiddlyspot are the only people who can talk to the tech support people because they're the ones that only account period regardless of the fact that you uploaded the project. They have told me that they've been in contact with the creators of tiddlyspot which is in line with what they have already told us at the top of this post period so hopefully something can be done but all we have to do is wait.
Use it nearly daily for over a decade. Have several sites I need recovered: I have some backups, but they're months old now. Please let me know if there is a way to recover this data, I can give you a full list of the pages.
Much appreciated for this service in the past, and any help recovering our data, thanks!
I absolutely use TiddlySpot every day, and unfortunately have no recent backups. Would love the chance to recover that data. Thanks for all you do!
I desperately need at least to get access to (i.e. download) two of my files, I use them since many years to manage our choir and related events. Unfortunately I have no backup. I am really sad.
oh no please make us download our wikis!!
oh no, i too used tiddlyspot and don't have a recent backup and would very, very much hope to be able to at least download the latest version. please let me know if and when this is possible (it's just the one: http://assotsiationsklimbim.tiddlyspot.com/)
I have 3 and would love the chance to get or download the html or backup of them
Always loved what tiddlyspot was and sorry to hear !!
Drat, would love to get my data back. I was dumb not to have local backups! My bacon was partially saved by wayback machine, but only partially.
Hello, does anyone have any idea how to recover the HTML? I work on mine a ton, so though I probably have a backup that's only a few weeks old I will have had lost a ton of work.
Hi there.
I've been using tiddlyspot for a long time, and before that tiddlyspace, as acarvalho.tiddlyspot.com.
I maintain a personal site there with mainly software development subjects. Today I was trying to get my pages on Namespace and Filesystem guidelines for a work assignment on the subject and "puff" no site...
This is a catastrophe to me as I only have a very old backup... and I'll be late for sure at work if I have to redo it all again.
I know this was a free service and I thank You guys for having it up all this time but, at least, a warning and a way of salvage our data would have been nice before shutting it down.
Please advise in any way for me to recover my data.
Best regards
André Carvalho
I have used it regularly and don't have a recent backup, so I would love to get access to the backups, at least, to extract the information.
Just let me add my plea for a return of the service. Like others here, I thought that I was keeping local backups of my Tiddlywiki but have now discovered that I have been lax in doing so and stand to lose a month's work.
Here's hoping it comes back.
Yes, I would very much like the service to continue, but if not, I really need to download the most recent version of two wikis: "filmterms" and "literaryterms"
Thanks for trying to get our data back!
I have been using it for over a dozen years, I do have some backups, but the convenience of tiddlyspot is so very high for me. I've looked at other ways of hosting it or having it available for editing and none of the solutions have worked well for me. I tried github for an hour and directions were not clear for me as I never got that working.
Thanks for your work in getting this back.
cheers!
Simon, I've relied on tiddlyspot for years, and it's absolutely pivotal to my workflow. I'm actually not sure how to move forward while these sites are down, (especially since I'm not immediately able to reconstruct or restore the contents to a desktop TW5, though I'll spend some time with WayBack now).
Tiddlyspot may be an aging platform, but I don't know any better way to host my tiddlywiki stuff online. (I gather there's some server-intensive method, but that's a learning curve I have little time for.) Given my work-home bike-commute, plus a frequent need to share permalinks with others, I've settled into doing everything that matters on my various tiddlyspot sites.
I thank you for updating us on the situation, and I'm fervently praying (in my rather pagan/agnostic way) for at least the ability to recover all the files, even if the lovely functionality of tiddlyspot needs some time to be restored/rehoused.
-Springer
I have used Tiddlyspot for well over 10 years and would prefer to continue using it if at all possible. But if not, I would like to download my last version so that I can transition it to a local Tiddlywiki. I truly appreciate the service that you have provided these many years and did point many of my friends and fellow SysAdmins to Tiddlyspot over that time. Thank you and take care.
Thank you for this wonderful website. I've lost dozens of hours in work building my tiddly, and the loss to me is disastrous and cannot be recovered. I desperately hope we are able to access our files even just to download/recover it.
Folks Simon et all
Although I do not know how to set up my own tiddlyspot, I wanted to contact Simon to offer my own hosting (cpanel/apache) but even http://tiddlyspot.blogspot.com/ is was not live. I found here now and reposting.
My host although in Australia, international cloud flare CDN should make this practical from my host.
Any Suggestions?
I have a few personally, somewhat neglected tiddlyspots, and can live without them, but over the years a lot of great solutions were documented on tiddlyspot sites, I would hate to see them lost.
The key questions are?
What is its total size?
What technologies does it need?
Would it be easy to bring up elsewhere?
Can we find a way to mirror it to avoid loss.
Regards
Tones
Hello, Simon :)
I only have one wiki stored at TS, but it contains many hours of work developing a feature for TW which has been quite helpful for myself and other users. I do not have a backup copy of the wiki stored locally (silly of me, I know), so it would be completely lost if this situation is not resolved.
Thank You very much for all the years you have provided us with this wonderful resource, and for you continued intervention on our behalf with DreamHost :)
--Zaphod
First of all let me say this tool has been simply fantastic. Unfortunatey I'm one of the few with a very old backup and a lot of valuable knowledge base stored on a private Tiddlyspot. I really really hope I could get back that file ...
I use it daily many times a day as my external brain for my projects :-(
I'd be prepared to pay for a commercial hosting solution.
Colin from New Zealand
Dear Simon,
I have been using tw since 2005 as a personal organiser/depository for valuable ideas or outside links. Since around when tiddlyspot started I used it also as a calendar I can share with my secretary/PA wherever either of us are. It has been absolutely amazing to do this and at no cost.
I am so grateful for this that I reflect that I cannot reasonably expect that this service can continue without some financial contribution from your grateful users. Your tech is so useful that some form of user payment should be considered, not so much for the software development cost, not in any way to undermine freeware/GNU paradigms, but for the server maintenance and general admin of things which are neither interesting nor negligible. As I am now on the point of retirement and have regularly backed the thing up I am minimally affected.
All I really want to say then is "Thanks so much". I will continue with tw on my PC only if you cannot get the tiddlyspot back up. If there is anything a non-IT professional can help with to support tiddlyspot please let me know.
Hi
I use TiddlySpot and love it. I have tried several apps and sites but none are as flexible and yet easy-to-use as Tidly. Would be great to have it back.
Brendan
I use tiddlyspot to put all the cooking recipes I tried and kept it updated. Wondering if I csn have a backup copy of my wiki. -ronp
I don't know any analogues TiddlySpot, we really need it. He's the best !!!
Thankful for this service through the years. I have not found a better alternative for managing what's in my brain. I depend on Tiddlyspot mGSD for that. :) I hope the data can be recovered and this solution can live on!
Hello - I love this spot as a place to get ideas / quotes out of my head and into a place where I can sort into something a bit more coherent! Thank you for the site, I rely on it on a more or less weekly basis and often daily! If it is indeed the end of the line - I would love the ability to have a copy of the data. Thank you and I hope it can be resolved!
Is Tiddlyspot back up? I'm no longer receiving the error message.
Family Attic, thanks for posting this!
GOOD NEWS: I can load (and download) some TW projects that I was bracing to lose entirely...
BAD NEWS: I'm NOT getting the tiddlyspot SAVE function to work. Then again, maybe this is partly good: it won't let us forget that the future of tiddlyspot is uncertain.
So, for now, I'm just blanking out the tiddlyspot save details in the control panel, so that the "save" button triggers a download; I'll work offline on these projects until/unless tiddlyspot (or another seamless hosting solution, if we must bid farewell to this one) comes through.
(Alas, I don't even remember how to get my TW Classic pages on tiddlyspot to download locally! But they're already the sites that weren't important-enough to upgrade...)
-Springer
TiddlySpot is the best! Please do not take it out. There are no alternatives as good as TiddlylSpot, not even close.
I have been using Tiddyspot for a very long time (2007?), specifically for mGSD (formerly MonkeyGTD) task manager. I will be sad to see it go, but thank you for your efforts over the years.
Hello,
I write from Geneva and I would like to say that tiddlyspot is a very good site very usefull. i hope we will soon have complete use of it.
Thanks a lot for the job
Albert
I've used tiddlyspot for years now for several different wikis. It has been a wonderful resource and I would be sad to see it go! Thank you for the site - I hope you can find a way to keep it going.
I fell in love with Tiddlyspot just last year, it's simpler and easier to use than many WIKI sites that I've tried. I would love to help out financially if that would solve the issue!
I use TiddlySpot to manage my recipes. Nothing comes close to the ease of use.
I still use tiddlyspot (and have for many, many years) and just noticed that sites weren't saving today. I do make a backup but having access to it online is really valuable.
I'll post here for anyone who's following this comment thread and not the main blog.
The messages here inspired me to create a successor to Tiddlyspot called Tiddlyhost. It's running now at https://tiddlyhost.com/ . Please give that a try if you're still in need of a convenient place to keep your TiddlyWikis. Also, saving should be working again now on the old Tiddlyspot sites. Let me know if you have problems with it.
See more details on this blog at https://tiddlyspot.blogspot.com/ .
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