Since I see a lot of retards who do not bother to properly archive Steam links, I might as well write a guide on how to properly do so. Given how easy it is to access this data too, this an also double up as an infosec guide for Steam.
DISCLAIMER:
Given the nature of Steam on archive.vn, such as .vn occasionally catching content warnings on games with no way to accept nor able to check "View More Info" on people's profiles,
archive.org might be a better bet for archiving certain Steam content. When archiving with archive.vn, with ID64s, it redirects you to the same page with their custom URL, effectively archiving both the ID64
and custom URL with a single archive, and also when searching from their custom URL, it says that the archive is redirected from the ID64. If you do this with archive.org, I believe it does the same thing, but gives a 302 message and redirects you to their custom URL, but not the other way around, unlike archive.vn.
tl;dr: use archive.vn to archive for convenience, use archive.org to archive pages with content that .vn cannot access/mitigate, which happens more often than not.
Always,
ALWAYS, grab the ID64 of the lolcow/group, since they can change it at any time. Because other people are retarded with archiving Steam profiles, you might have use both ID64 and custom URL in order to actually get the full picture of someone's transformation to lolcowdom on Steam, and due to Wayback's archives of Steam being more complete than archive.vn's, archive.org is usually better for
accessing older archives of people's Steam profiles,
especially for 2000s/early-mid 2010s profiles, as archive.vn was not as prominent or outright nonexistent at those time, and for Steam groups, since next to no one uses id64s because it's not as easy to get as profiles, there might not even be any id64 archives of groups.
PROFILES:
Profiles are braindead easy; if it's not already their main link (you can tell if their profile link contains
/profile/{NUMBERS} as opposed to
/id/{CUSTOM_URL}) you can go to
Steamrep, put their URL into the search, and right below their name, there will be their ID64. Below that, there's a few more links. Most of them can be disregarded, but the steam3ID can be used as explained later.
GROUPS:
Groups are a bit more complicated, but still easy; you get the link to the group,
add /memberslistxml/?xml=1 at the end, and you will be redirected to XML source of the page. At the very top, in
<groupID64>, you can get the group ID for the group. And to access the new permanent link, you replace the
groups/{CUSTOM_URL} with
gid/{GROUPID64}.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Korps/ Basic group link
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Korps/memberslistxml/?xml=1 XML link with groupID64
https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791429609910 GroupID link, which redirects to the original group.
USER CONTENT:
Now for certain aspects of a person's profile, which is extremely handy if they have a private profile. These are all added after the main profile URL (
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/{ID64}).
-
/screenshots, shows the person's screenshots tab
-
/images, shows the person's artwork tab
-
/videos, shows the person's video tab, and videos on there can be traced to the person's linked Youtube account
-
/myworkshopfiles, shows the person's workshop tab, alongside how many folowers they have; it does
not show who their followers are
-
/myworkshopfiles/?section=merchandise, shows the person's merchandise tab
-
/myworkshopfiles/?section=collections, shows the person's collections tab
-
/myworkshopfiles/?section=collections, shows the person's guide tab
Adding
&p={PAGE NUMBER} at the end of any tab with
/myworkshopfiles to go to a specific page of the person's tab
-
/posthistory to check their forum posts;
/?p={PAGE NUMBER} to go to a certain page of forum posts. NOTE: this
only works for posts made on game forums/announcements, it does
not work for posts made in group forums.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197994787161/posthistory Example link
-
/friends to check their friends; NOTE: only works if their profile is both public
and friends are public, but it does work on community banned profiles if they do have the two prerequisites.
-
/allcomments to check their comments in batches of fifty instead of 6 at a time; only works if profile is public, and also works on community banned profiles;
/?ctp={PAGE NUMBER} to go to a specific page.
Groups:
-
/announcements to get a group's announcements;
/?p={PAGE NUMBER} for a specific page
-
/discussions to get a group's forum; "/{SUBFORUM NUMBER}" for a specific subforum; zero indexed,
/fp={PAGE NUMBER} for a specific page
-
/events for group events
-
/members for group members;
/?p={PAGE NUMBER} for a specific page
-
/comments for the comments in batches of fifty; no known way to archive a specific page, as clicking on a different page does
not change the url.
-
/curation for the group's curator page.
If you want to check a person's post history in a certain group, you can search with
/discussions/search/?author={STEAM3ID} at the end of the group's link;
&p={PAGE NUMBER} for a specific page.
For archiving a specific page/post on a thread, you go to the thread page, and put in
?ctp={PAGE NUMBER} at the end of the page. This works both on the Steam Community forums and group forums. Do keep in mind that this will archive based on the 15 posts per page setting. To archive a specific post, on the post, on the bottom right, there is the post number in the thread, right click and click "Copy Link Address" for the link. Just like the previous post, the url created assumes you're using the 15 posts per page setting. There is no option for this with the OP, but it does not matter since it appears at the top of every page of the thread.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/30/864973577904147767/?ctp=18615#c3758850346186677295 Example link: page 18615, post 279211.
STEAMREP DATA:
Under "Historical Data" (right to "SteamRep Profile Overview"), you can check the previous names/profile pictures/friends of the person's profile, which a new listing is added to the person every time their SteamRep is checked. The formatting for each one goes as :
{DATE OF ARCHIVE} | {STEAM NAME} | {AMOUNT OF FRIENDS}/{AMOUNT OF STEAMREP BANNED FRIENDS}. You can check the specific data of each profile, but you are required to be signed in with your Steam profile to be able to check. As far as I know, the website does not tell others if you decide to check someone's specific historical data listing.
WARNING: There is an option to disable historical data, where some users might opt-in for that, and you will be prompted with this message; you can still check for the historical data for the past month.
Steamrep Forums can also be used to find old aliases of a user that otherwise might not be on any other Steam related databases, if the user has posted on the forums (most likely to report someone for a scam/appeal a SteamRep ban). The username on the forums can be set to something different from their Steam name, and cannot be changed at all, period, and right below their SteamRep forum username is their ID64.
STEAMID.UK DATA:
Steamid.uk has fallen from grace over the past several years since most of the features have been paywalled, but you are still able to get some data from there that Steamrep cannot offer. Some useful features that aren't paywalled are being able to see the person's ENTIRE name history, although usually the last several letters are censored), the ability to see all of their profile pictures they used, and seeing ALL of their previous custom URLS (later two require you to be logged into Steam). You can also search a profile picture for a higher resolution and get a list of people who are currently using the picture, but this is limited to 10 times per day. There were some other options, like seeing every historical friend they had in a single list and a few other things that I forgot about, but that's all behind a Patreon paywall unfortunately.
Another example with Keffals profile
https://steamid.uk/profile/76561197994787161
Now go out there and archive some lolcows with style!
