I’m working on an idea, inspired by some conversations with The Decelerator.
When organisations or projects wind up, when ownership changes, or simply when things get redeveloped, a lot of digital history gets lost.
Sometimes, the important outputs from those things are preserved in archives like The Wayback Machine, or The UK Government Web Archive – if you know how to search for them.
I’ve taken to making my own archives from time to time using SiteSucker to save down static files from websites so I can host them – mainly for ease of my own personal reference. For instance, The Directgov Review, the Coronation, or the work of 18f.
But
Domains are generally registered just for a year or two, and when the credit card used to register them lapses, then the domain stops working shortly afterwards. Or worse – like one of my old projects – gets taken over by squatters. It might all be archived somewhere, but links to it from around the web stop working.
What if there was a sort of reliable entity that would commit to hosting a handful of the most important static digital outputs from your organisation, team or project for an extended period – say, 10 or 15 years – and redirecting traffic to them from your old domain?
Those outputs would vary depending on the organisation. It might be a team blog (valuable corporate blogs often get deleted when things get redeveloped). Or the PDF reports of some important research the organisation delivered which are referenced in lots of other places. Or maybe an image gallery, a set of video interviews, a prototype that was ahead of its time, or a library of links.
The Domain Custodian idea
The Domain Custodian would be a not for profit entity of some kind.
- The Domain Custodian hosts a signpost page about your organisation or project with a handful of screenshots of your site as it was at the end and a description of what you did.
- The signpost page lists links to copies of the important outputs you selected (up to a certain total size limit) and links to other third party archives of your content where they exist.
- As you close your thing down, you effectively pre-pay the domain registration and small admin fee for the archiving and signpost page set up.
- The Domain Custodian takes over your domain as you wind up, redirecting all traffic to a signpost page for your organisation. And it keeps that working for 10+ years.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your ideas and feedback, and to know if this already exists somewhere.