11 ms·

But what can you do when you do care, to make your website as durable as a printed book?

by gowld 4y ago

hypertele-Xii 4y ago
You could literally print it in a book. With links suffixed by a page number [915].
bombcar 4y ago
Depends on if you want it to survive without you maintaining it. If so, something like a bog-standard Wordpress blog hosted by them might work until they decide they don't want to bother anymore. Otherwise, some setup using S3-as-a-website or GitHub pages may work, but those also depend on the company maintaining that service. If your entire website can be dropped into a ZIP file and served anywhere, you have a greater chance in it surviving, especially if the internet archive got a copy at some point. But if you die and nobody cares about the content, eventually it will disappear.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > If your entire website can be dropped into a ZIP file and served anywhere, you have a greater chance in it surviving, especially if the internet archive got a copy at some point. Well, your entire website can be a zip: https://redbean.dev/ https://redbean.dev/
jl6 4y ago
Point archive.org at it (and make a donation).
SoftTalker 4y ago
Keep it as simple as possible. Static HTML that can be dropped on any web server. HTML/HTTP may some day be obsolete, but will likely be around longer than anything built on complicated javascript frameworks or tightly tied to current web browser technologies.
usrbinbash 4y ago
One step in the right direction is to keep the representation of information simple, or to transform it to something simple for long-term archiving. Frameworks and Browsers change. External services change. But, unless its stored with no backup and the medium fails, an ASCII textfile composed 50 years ago is still readable today, and will likely still be readable in 100 years. And thanks to UTF-8 being pretty much ubiquitous these days, we don't even have to limit ourselves to ASCII any more. I am not saying to make every page a textfile. I am merely saying that one step to preserve digital information for generations yet to come, is to represent it in simple and robust formats. And if simple is not an option (eg. media will probably need to be use a compression format), then well documented and open formats should be used.

But what can you do when you do care, to make your website as durable as a printed book?

by gowld 4y ago

But what can you do when you do care, to make your website as durable as a printed book?

hypertele-Xii 4y ago

You could literally print it in a book. With links suffixed by a page number [915].

bombcar 4y ago

Depends on if you want it to survive without you maintaining it. If so, something like a bog-standard Wordpress blog hosted by them might work until they decide they don't want to bother anymore. Otherwise, some setup using S3-as-a-website or GitHub pages may work, but those also depend on the company maintaining that service. If your entire website can be dropped into a ZIP file and served anywhere, you have a greater chance in it surviving, especially if the internet archive got a copy at some point. But if you die and nobody cares about the content, eventually it will disappear.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> If your entire website can be dropped into a ZIP file and served anywhere, you have a greater chance in it surviving, especially if the internet archive got a copy at some point. Well, your entire website can be a zip: https://redbean.dev/ https://redbean.dev/

jl6 4y ago

Point archive.org at it (and make a donation).

SoftTalker 4y ago

Keep it as simple as possible. Static HTML that can be dropped on any web server. HTML/HTTP may some day be obsolete, but will likely be around longer than anything built on complicated javascript frameworks or tightly tied to current web browser technologies.

usrbinbash 4y ago

One step in the right direction is to keep the representation of information simple, or to transform it to something simple for long-term archiving. Frameworks and Browsers change. External services change. But, unless its stored with no backup and the medium fails, an ASCII textfile composed 50 years ago is still readable today, and will likely still be readable in 100 years. And thanks to UTF-8 being pretty much ubiquitous these days, we don't even have to limit ourselves to ASCII any more. I am not saying to make every page a textfile. I am merely saying that one step to preserve digital information for generations yet to come, is to represent it in simple and robust formats. And if simple is not an option (eg. media will probably need to be use a compression format), then well documented and open formats should be used.