Technology1 min read

If you love a website, back it up

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The sudden demise of teapuppies.com, an Ochaken fansite hosted since 2004 that vanished into gambling ads, highlights the precarious nature of online content. Individuals can prevent such permanent loss by creating standardized WARC files containing entire functional webpages, links, and imagery. Tools such as ArchiveWeb.page allow users to capture pages through a Chrome extension or via an independent application with an integrated browser.

Key points

  • Web users should take personal responsibility for archiving favorite sites instead of ass…: Web users should take personal responsibility for archiving favorite sites instead of assuming institutions will save them.
  • Interacting with page elements during an active archive session ensures that all underlyi…: Interacting with page elements during an active archive session ensures that all underlying site data is properly captured.
  • A standalone ArchiveWeb.page application with a built-in browser provides an alternative…: A standalone ArchiveWeb.page application with a built-in browser provides an alternative for individuals not utilizing Chrome.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

This story starts with a little tragedy. See, I’ve got these old webpages I love to go back and look on every now and then. There’s websites that have been online unchanged for years and years, or decades, and there’s something a little cozy about checking in on them every now and then to see an old friend is still doing okay. Sometimes, of course, tragedy strikes.

There was this fansite called teapuppies.com for an old anime series and and toy line called Ochaken. It’s about these cute cartoon dog characters who have tea leaves for ears, each of them named after a different kind of tea.1 The site had been online since 2004 and had basically not changed since 2005, but it was nice just having it around. Except when I went to visit it a few weeks ago, and discovered that not only was the site gone but the domain is now being used to serve online gambling ads.

I work in web archiving, by the way. Which is to say that I should have known the site…

Technology