As I was doing some maintenance/updates to my list of Commodore resources, I noticed that one website (which I referenced many times) was no longer available. The Wiki provider that hosted the Commodore Programming Wiki shut down the site. They no longer provided free wiki space. Another valuable Commodore related resource was gone. Or was it?

I understand people either lose interest in certain projects, or life events redirects attention to other things. It happens to me all of the time. But, it saddens me to see Commodore websites, like this Wiki, disappear from the Internet. Even if they cannot be maintained, I think it's still worth having them available for reference purposes. So, I thought, maybe in this situation, I could do something to preserve the useful information that filled the pages of the Commodore Programming Wiki and keep it from being lost. I have some storage space on my server account; maybe I could resurrect the site in some way.

So, I contacted the Wiki hosting site and asked them if I could gain temporary access to the old content to copy it over to my web space. They informed me that they could only allow the original owner of the Wiki access to the data. But, they would be happy to contact him on my behalf. They did, and just a day later, I was contacted by Scott, the original creator of the Commodore Programming Wiki.

He sent me a zipped file of all of the Wiki pages, that made up the programming guide, and offered me the opportunity to adopt the project, if I so desired. I jumped at the chance and gladly accepted his offer. I am now in the process of resurrecting and reconstructing the data on a new site, which I've called the CBM User's Guide, over on my domain at: http://cbmuserguide.chorusgrove.com.

I've relabeled the Wiki this way because, over time, I would like to add general user tips to the database, so there's more content for a potentially wider user base. I'd also like to include information for more Commodore related hardware, than just the C64 and C128. We'll see how the project evolves over time.

I'm not done with the resurrection of the original Wiki data just yet, but winter is coming and I foresee having more free time on my hands to develop the site. So please stay tuned. And, if you'd like to contribute to the project, then please feel free to contact me.

Thank you, Scott, for this opportunity!

If anyone reading this post knows of another Commodore computer resource about to be wiped from the Web, please let me know. Maybe we can do something to keep it from being lost.