Ever so often I check my website pages for broken links and try to update them if I can. One method I thought of to prevent broken links from affecting future GIMPers ability to check out tutorials was to provide a PDF file of the web tutorial. On a few links I happened to have PDFs. I tried to upload one here on GIMP Chat and discovered PDF was not a permitted filetype.

If a website no longer exists, in most cases The Wayback Machine is an option.

You can post as an attachment.

Or convert the pdf to jpeg and post.

OTOH there isn't that much value in old tutorials: the GUI has changed, there are better tools, better ways... or better tutorials.

In particular, the fact than many filters do act directly on the canvas in 2.10 has radically changed the ways to do things. I expect the V3 GUI to make another batch obsolete, and when we get non-destructive editing most tutorials will become outdated overnight.

Would you drive a Tesla using the user's manual for a Ford model T?

That's a bit of a stretch.

However, if my Tesla is Silver and I want to see what it looks like in Emerald using GIMP, I'm certainly going to use techniques that I know that will help me do that.

If my tutorials no longer work, and some "have" become obsolete simply due to non-working scripts, GIMP changes, etc., I just remove them from my website.

You're right, though. Everything has a time limit, and many things will change with how we do things in GIMP. Eventually, we'll all fade away into the sunset, and new people will take our place.

PDFs as an attachment. Got it!

As a workaround, you can put the pdf in a zip file. Zip files are allowed.

What ofnuts said it's very true. GIMP keeps developing and old tutorials are going to fade away. One thing I will do; If I had old tutorials I will then re-make them on the new versions to keep them alive. Probably I'm going to change the technique a little and use different tools. The Wayback Machine it would be your best tool to retrieve those pdf, Mahvin, good luck.

Some tutorials have already been broken down to their simplest form, it's just the technique is different, or may not require a script. So, yes, it's a good idea to redo them (if they are a popular on your site). I cater to beginners who at one time, just wanted simplicity (a few easy steps). I'm finding more people are wanting less hand holding and just wanting to know how to install things (Mac). Ofnuts is very correct. One day you'll just be able to tell GIMP what you want and it does it for you. Probably not until we're all LONG GONE, though.

No, because we are going to want more complicated things. A customer of mine made the remark that despite the advances in software engineering and tools, projects didn't reduce in size. I replied that in the sixties, if we were to build his gigantic website in Fortran or Cobol, we would still be working on it.

I know this an old post, but, I don't really agree. I mean, what of tutorials like the Scott Effect, or The Ultimate GIMP Planet Tutorial? Or the Transparent objects tutorial from the GIMP User Group? Regardless of how the GUI changes or improves, it's still useful to know these techniques. I mean, will you say that about Draconian's MetalWurx series? Little value? I'm not trying to be confrontational here, just pleading the case of tutorials unfortunately long since lost. And even the WayBack Machine, undoubtedly useful as it is to resurrect lost tuts, has its shortcomings. Some of the offsite tutorials used photobucket, and a number of critical screenshots (with filter baseline settings) have been lost to time, with no hope of finding them again, short of the original tutorial creator being able to recollect them after so much time has passed.

If you want to see the images in those offsite that used photobucket, Chrome has an extension that open those images. It's called "Photobucket Hotlink Fix" go to install it here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... apbifiaedg

And back in the day, you were an enormous help to me with exactly what you describe here...as a Mac user you gave me so much support and encouragement which I can never repay or forget. Thank you Mahvin, especially if I have never said that before. I really appreciated your help 10 years ago. Today you have my utmost respect.

Online bit rot's a problem and sometimes even the wayback machine's not an option. Best to immediately convert all tuts into a PDF to share; maybe the mods can do this for some of the tuts, but if tuts require external (and now log gone scripts or plugins) resources, such tuts will eventually experience bit rot; just an unfortunate fact.