The Way Back Machine, part of the Internet Archive, backs up the web for us. As websites come, change, and go it provides access to that rich history. But, many sites are built in a manner that doesn’t backup the information well or at all. This leads to lost history.

Below is a screenshot of the CloudDevelop conference. The domain recently lapsed as the conference is no longer around. The site as captured by the Internet Archive doesn’t have details on speakers or sessions.

CloudDevelop isn’t the only website with this type of problem. Another conference example is the schedule for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019. There are numerous non-conference sites suffering from the same problem. For example, my profile page on DZone does not list any of my content.

This all has to do with the way the sites are being built. It’s a how problem. It’s baked into the patterns and technologies we are using.

Please Make Them Archivable

Building sites that aren’t being archived isn’t good for us in the future. So often we need to refer back to data from the past. To find something we don’t clearly remember. To search through the history of something. For nostalgia. For news reporting. For research. And much much more.

With that in mind… when you’re building sites, please do so in a manner that’s archivable.