daugavpils.fans
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How this archive works

Archive site: daugavpils.fans

This text isn't for programmers. It's written for anyone interested in the Daugavpils music scene: listeners, musicians, their friends and family.

It explains three things in plain language:

  1. where the recordings, photos, and all the information about this archive actually live;
  2. how to add new music, photos, or a band's history;
  3. what happens if whoever currently runs this can no longer continue, for whatever reason.

Short version: the daugavpils.fans site is just a storefront. The recordings and descriptions themselves live in two places that don't depend on this site or on any one particular person.

Why this archive exists

Daugavpils music scene recordings have existed scattered for years — on cassettes, discs, and individual people's hard drives, with no shared place where they could be found and preserved. This project solves exactly that problem: it keeps recordings, photos, and the scene's history in one open place, before they're lost for good.

This is a non-commercial, volunteer-run archive — there are no ads, subscriptions, or monetization on the site, and no one earns anything from it. Material is added by scene members and listeners on their own initiative and in good faith — the curator can't physically contact every band and confirm every detail before publishing. If you're the author of a recording, or represent a band, and think something was published incorrectly or without your consent — that gets resolved quickly and without conflict, see "Is this actually allowed? About the license" below.

This is one person's work, done voluntarily, in their spare time — please keep that in mind: we're here to preserve the scene's music, not to argue with anyone.

Where the data actually lives

flowchart LR
    subgraph github["GitHub (open to everyone)"]
        M["Band and album descriptions:<br/>names, tracklists, biographies,<br/>who played in which band"]
    end

    subgraph ia["archive.org (open to everyone)"]
        A["The actual files:<br/>song recordings, photos, video"]
    end

    subgraph site["daugavpils.fans"]
        W["Main site — a storefront<br/>for browsing and listening"]
    end

    subgraph pages["Site backup copy"]
        P["GitHub Pages:<br/>svalevka.github.io/daugavpils.fans<br/>updates itself, automatically"]
    end

    M --> W
    A --> W
    M --> P
    A --> P

This split is deliberate: if something happens to the daugavpils.fans site, the recordings and descriptions themselves don't disappear along with it — they don't depend on whether the site is running.

How to add a new band or release

You can add a new band, album, photo, or correction directly through the site's web interface — without needing to know git, without registering, and without special software.

1. Add a completely new band

On the main page of daugavpils.fans, in the top navigation header, there is a "Suggest a band" button (leading to review.daugavpils.fans/submit/add-band).

There you can provide: - Band name, years of activity, and musical genres; - Band history, biography, or personal memories (first-hand testimonies); - Band photo (optional); - First album or demo recording (optional): title, year of recording, track audio files (MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, OGG, M4A) with drag-and-drop track reordering, and cover artwork.

2. Add a new album to an existing band

On the page of any band, there is a "Suggest an album" button (leading to the album submission form for that band, e.g. review.daugavpils.fans/submit/<slug>/add-release).

There you can: - Specify the release title, year, genres, liner notes, and select an open license (Creative Commons); - Upload track audio files, arrange their playback order via drag-and-drop, and enter track titles; - Attach album cover art.

3. Fix text or add photos/video to an existing band or album

On the page of any band or album, there is a "Suggest a change" button (review.daugavpils.fans/submit). There you can fix inaccuracies in biographies, lineup lists, or photo captions, or upload a new photo or video clip/live recording.

What happens after submitting?

  1. The proposal is reviewed by an autonomous AI assistant (checking for spam, manipulation, authenticity of history, and valid audio files) or reviewed by curators in the moderation dashboard.
  2. Safety limits apply to publishing new material: at most 1 new band and at most 3 new releases are published per rolling 24 hours (to protect the archive from spam surges). The queue publishes automatically as the 24-hour window elapses.
  3. Once approved, the automated process on GitHub will:
  4. compute SHA-256 checksums, bitrates, and durations via ffprobe;
  5. upload media files to permanent storage on archive.org;
  6. format metadata in the project repository and update the consolidated metadata backup;
  7. rebuild and update the daugavpils.fans website.
  8. All review decisions (approved and rejected submissions) are recorded in the curators' decision log with history retained for 90 days.

Alternative: hand materials to a curator directly

If using the web form is inconvenient (for example, if you have a box of cassette tapes or gigabytes of digitized audio): - post to GitHub Issues for the project (in your own words); - or email the curator at daugavpils@gmail.com.

The curator will help digitize, verify, and carefully integrate the materials into the archive.

(If you know your way around git and want to prepare materials manually via a pull request, the step-by-step technical process is described in README.md.)

What happens if there's no one left to run this

Honest answer: the daugavpils.fans address might one day stop working. It runs on a server that costs money and needs looking after (renewing payment, renewing the security certificate, and so on). If for whatever reason there's no one left to take care of that, this particular address may eventually disappear.

But the site itself — the same storefront, with the same content — already exists today at a backup address that doesn't depend on this server, and updates itself automatically every time the archive changes:

svalevka.github.io/daugavpils.fans

This copy is hosted on GitHub Pages — a free service for hosting static sites like this one, from the same GitHub that stores the band and album descriptions (see above). If daugavpils.fans ever stops working because of a problem with this particular server, try that address instead — it should have the same content.

Important caveat: this backup copy is itself hosted on GitHub — the same service where the band and album descriptions are actually maintained. It protects against one specific case — the daugavpils.fans server itself failing — but not against the hypothetical disappearance of GitHub itself. If that did happen, both copies of the site would go down along with it, as would the usual way of editing the archive.

But even that more serious scenario doesn't mean the music and the bands' history would be lost for good. Here's why:

In other words: the site is only a storefront, and it already has a backup address in case the main one stops working. But what's shown in that storefront is already sitting out in the open, in two reliable, independent places — and it's enough for even a handful of people to have downloaded a copy of the archive for it to never disappear.

What happens if access to the archive.org account is lost

This is a narrower, separate question from the previous section (which was about the daugavpils.fans site itself). This one is about the files themselves: to upload new recordings, photos, and video to the archive, the curator uses one specific archive.org account (its username is daugavpils.fans). If access to that account were lost and couldn't be recovered — that's unpleasant, but not the end of the world: everything already published stays exactly where it is and remains accessible to everyone, forever. It would just become harder to add anything new until access is restored one way or another.

There are two ways to deal with this, and they complement each other:

  1. A pre-arranged, automatic method. The curator can choose a small circle of trusted people in advance. If the curator disappears and stops responding, anyone on that list can request access through GitHub; the curator then has a week to cancel the request (if they in fact haven't disappeared). If nothing happens within that week, access is automatically transferred to whoever requested it. This is all set up so it doesn't require the curator to keep maintaining anything, and doesn't require anyone to store passwords in advance. (Technical details in documentation/DEAD_MANS_SWITCH.md, for those familiar with git and GitHub Actions.)
  2. A fallback method for anyone. Even if the first method isn't set up, or doesn't work, in principle anyone can restore the ability to add new material, even without any prior arrangement — because all the band and album descriptions are already open and live on GitHub. It takes a few more steps (you need to set up a new archive.org account and move the links over to it once), but it doesn't require anyone's permission. (Details in documentation/RECOVERY.md.)

How to get on the list of trusted people

If you know your way around GitHub and want to be one of the people who could restore access if the curator were to disappear — it's not a heavy commitment:

How to download the whole archive for yourself

If you'd like to have your own copy of the entire archive — recordings, photos, video, and all the descriptions — just in case, or simply to have it:

You can just listen to the music directly on daugavpils.fans — no need to download anything. But if you specifically want a full copy on your own computer, there's a ready-made way to download everything with one command, automatically, with verification that nothing got corrupted along the way. It takes a bit of technical skill (being able to run a command in a terminal), but it's one step instead of manually downloading every band and album one by one.

The full, step-by-step instructions (for those familiar with git and the terminal): documentation/BACKUP.md.

Is this actually allowed? About the license

Every album in the archive has a Creative Commons license attached — chosen by whoever adds the album to the archive (the author themselves, another band member, or someone from their circle), as a good-faith declaration that the recording can be freely shared (usually with a condition — non-commercial use, with attribution). The archive's curator doesn't personally verify every such declaration with the band before publishing — that isn't possible for an archive that grows through community contributions. If you're the author and think the license listed is wrong, or that you never gave that consent — read on for what to do.

If you're the author and want your recording taken down

We respect an author's right to decide what happens to their music. If you're the author (or rights holder) of a recording and want it removed from the archive — write to us, and we'll respond quickly. Before taking it down, we may ask you to confirm authorship — this protects the archive from accidental or bad-faith requests from people with no actual connection to the recording. Until that's confirmed, the recording may be temporarily hidden from the site, but it isn't permanently deleted — if the claim turns out to be mistaken, everything is restored without loss.

How to get in touch