Browser or software updates, changes in design practices, and transitions in project management can all impact a website’s functionality. Individuals, sometimes entire teams, are responsible for keeping websites alive. If you write an article that’s published in the New York Times, you probably don’t have to worry about suddenly losing online access to the journal because there are departments in place to support an ongoing, continually improved web presence. However, if you build a Wordpress site for a class project, there is a high chance the site could go dark a semester or two later, when the classmate in charge of maintaining the account access or hosted server subscription has moved on, and you are no longer in touch. 

An “archived website” has been preserved using specialized software developed to capture the content as well as the design and functionality. If a website has been properly archived, it will appear to be a close replica of the original. An archived copy represents a moment in time, and will not show updates made to the site after the date of the capture. 

There are different approaches to ensuring access to your online work. 

Submit the URL to the Wayback Machine with Save Page Now. 

• Once you add your link to Save Page Now from the Archive.org Web section, it will be available through the Wayback Machine. Sites with heavy traffic, like our New York Times example above, will be captured regularly through the Wayback Machine and do not need to be saved. Sites with smaller audiences, such as a microsite for a class project, could benefit from the Save Page Now feature. 

Use Conifer to create your own archival capture. 

• If you would like to try creating an archival copy of your site, Conifer is a very user-friendly option that will allow you to download the web archive file (also known as a .warc file). Though keep in mind, .warc files can only be opened with a web archive emulator (like Conifer). Creating an account is free.

Open a perma.cc account.

• Perma.cc was created to preserve citation links in academic or legal sources. This will be helpful if you are looking to preserve a single page, but it will not capture any pages linked from that URL.

Find out if archivist(s) are already archiving the work.

• The New School Archives and Special Collections actively collects web-based work created by the New School community using software created by Archive.org: https://archive-it.org/home/newschoolarchives. 

There are certain platforms, formats, and features that will impact the ability to successfully archive web content. The recommendations below may be considered when building a site, though depending on the project, this advice cannot always be followed. 

DO

Use software with wide community adoption, rather than a new platform.

• When a platform has years of community support, it is more likely to have documentation about archiving specific features or unique code. Wix and Cargo Collective are examples of platforms that are not easily archived, whereas Wordpress and Drupal have higher use and tend to produce better captures.

Make your site accessible to all.

• Using accessibility best practices will lead to clear, functional design. To learn more about how this impacts archivability, this is an excellent article by archivist Ashley Blewer: “Accessibility and Archivability.”  

DON’T

Include external embedded media.

• For example, an embedded player that references videos posted to your Vimeo account will likely be difficult to archive. The same goes for embedded social media feeds. An archive-friendly option would be to select a publishing platform that allows you to directly embed videos or audio clips, like Wordpress. 

Create pages with login/registration requirements, or custom permissions.

• This might be necessary for your website content, but should generally be avoided. A common example is embedded or linked Google Drive directories and files. 

Use collapsed scrolling.

• This refers to pages that have a button that says something like, “Continue Reading,” that when pressed, loads more content at the end of the page.