Simon Willison
If someone wants to start a blog, and they'd like the content they publish to stick around on the internet for as long as possible into the future, what are their best options?
Buying a domain is tricky because domain names expire
GitHub Pages is pretty great, because GitHub is free and has, to-date, a great track record of not breaking *.github.io content
What are other great options? WordPress.com I think are good on this front
I don't trust anyone with less than 10 years of track record
Evan Prodromou
@timbray @simon one trick I'd like to try but haven't yet pulled off is using archive.org's free S3 clone for hosting static content.
Tim Bray
@simon I'm still at "buy a domain". It's pretty cheap, and all the respectable registrars will remind you when it's expiring, so hard to lose by accident.
Evan Prodromou
@simon @philippe @timbray you're both thinking of the Wayback Machine. That's not what I'm talking about.
You should read the docs I linked for Archive.org's free S3 clone. Stable, long-term URLs for original content.
I don't know how well it would work for setting up a statically-generated blog, but it would probably be worth the trouble, especially if it worked with a CNAME from your own domain. You could pre-pay the domain for 10-20 years and know that the site would stay up.
Simon Willison
@philippe @evan @timbray Archive.org is really useful, but the one thing it doesn't (yet) help with is keeping URLs working - and my personal ideal of blogging is all about linking to things and being linked to
Philippe Jadin
@evan @timbray @simon would it work to host wherever you want then rely on archive.org for, well, the long term archive part? Another option would be distributed filesystems like ipfs and ask friends to relay as much as possible.
Evan Prodromou
@simon @philippe @timbray I don't! I am not even sure it's possible. And definitely not as easy as using GitHub Pages. But if you wanted to bet on a service remaining online longer than any others, a.o is a good bet.
Simon Willison
@evan @philippe @timbray Oh wow that's amazing!
Do you know of any examples of sites that are hosted on there? The http://stats.s3.us.archive.org/downloadsPerDay.png in their docs is giving me a 500 error at the moment
Eaton
@mfowler @timbray @simon thirded. A domain jight only point at some service (like github pages) but it gives you the ability to sat, “ah, now I’m over THERE” when the inevitable shift of freemium hits
Martin Fowler
@timbray @simon I'll add a strong +1 to Tim. To really control your long-term material, you need a domain you control. Then you have the maximum flexibility on what tech to use on it.
Eaton
@simon so, I’ve been going back and digging up a bunch of my old work (aka, sites I built for clients in the 90s). Domain expiration is less common than host-rot, IME. More folks seem to hang onto a domain than continue to pay for hosting, though it’s a small samole size.
Simon Willison
I have a hunch that domain names eventually expiring is one of the top causes for blog content to become unavailable in the long (10+ year) term, but I don't have any actual data to back that up, just an intuition - partly based on how many of the things I've linked to from my own blog in the 2000s no longer exist
Simon Willison
I don't trust Medium because they added a paywall / registration wall to content that had previously been published
Substack are too young to have proven themselves as long-term trustworthy stewards of content
I used to trust Twitter for long-term content availability, but then they got bought by someone who clearly doesn't care about that at all (and threads are now hidden behind registration walls)
Claudius
@simon waybackmachine / the internet archive is now the only source for so many things I remember from the early internet. It's very sad.
Mike McCaffrey
@simon @natbat I often think that we need digital columbariums where you can upload your digital content, or those of your loved ones, and it is maintained in perpetuity after you die using an endowment model.
Personally, I would love for some of my photos to keep existing after I am gone.
Simon Willison
Since it's my birthday today, I asked @natbat if she could set me up a non-profit foundation which works as a co-operative where people can pool resources and donate their domain name and cash to keep it maintained (and static files served from it) forever, with a board of directors that appoints their own successors and keeps the thing running in perpetuity without it depending on any single individual
She said she already got me a new watch
Simon Willison
@mikemccaffrey @natbat "digital columbariums" is a fantastic turn of phrase, love that!
Mikołaj Hołysz
@simon Whatever you end up doing, ensure you're properly crawled by archive.org in any case. Custom domains help with this, I've seen a platform throw a tantrum over their content being there when they went down and opt themselves out, losing years of valuable community history.
Simon Willison
@Dtl Blogger has been around forever, but Google's track record of keeping things running (even things that have been around forever) is still bad enough that I don't trust it - especially since they seem to have lost interest in further developing Blogger over a decade ago
Dr David Mills
@simon blogger has been around forever.
Dreamwidth?
clacke
@thattommyhall Oops. My 2010 travel blog is gone then. 😔
I was selfhosting my main, but wanted something that was easy to update on the go. 😐
bag∘cans
@simon @Dtl they are retiring old accounts soon, I imagine a lot will drop off then
Dr David Mills
@clacke @simon @thattommyhall
Did it get captured by archive.org?
clacke
@Dtl Ah, it's still there. It was on a Google account already. I made an update to the main blurb so that the site has been touched for the first time in over a decade.
It did get captured by the Wayback Machine, but you never know. If they shutter blogspot.com they might issue takedowns of historical data For Reasons. I'd better back it up while I have access to the source text.
Eric Scouten
@mfowler @timbray @simon 💯 agree.
I’ll add to that that using a static site generator (assuming you’re sufficiently geeky to do it) is valuable insurance against any given provider going sideways.
I wrote about my approach here: https://ericscouten.dev/2021/how-i-built-146-parks/ and it now reflects how I’ve built all of my sites.
happyborg
@simon
One of the primary goals of #SafeNetwork is to solve this problem, and it has now entered pre beta testing.
It has been through a number of designs and false starts and is aiming to launch with relatively modest initial features compared to its earlier perpetual, versioned web. But the capability to implement that, inc. non-expiring human-readable domain names will be there. So watch this space in 2024, or even join in the testing and get a feel for what is coming.
@mfowler @timbray
Simon Willison
@mfowler @timbray That's great advice for people who know they're going to continue actively caring about their blog for the long-term, but I'm hoping to find a safe default for people who might get inspired, blog for a few months / few years, then lose interest - but still want the content they write to stay online effectively forever
My hunch is that expired domains are an extremely common reason for personal content to blink out of existence
Strypey
@happyborg
> Currently we have no good options
A lot of new hosting companies are being set up specifically to fill this gap.
Shameless self-promotion; Bridge Seat Cooperative is one of them, see;
Bridgeseat.nz
We are worker-owned, democratically run, and immune to VC funding or acquisition. We'll be taking on beta testers soon and hope to have production systems ready for customers in a few months.
Stuart Langridge
@simon My new-internet-thing rules are, I think, these:
1. if you have a personal domain already then you're likely to keep it. Host things there, not on their own domain.
2. if you don't, then you have no pre-existing inclination toward internet permanence. Decide whether you or VC-funded companies are likely to have more staying power
2a. if you think it's you, buy a domain and host your thing on it
2b. if it's not you, pick a company with a good record (github, wordpress &c) and put it there
happyborg
@sil
And may I suggest, remember that github = Microsoft, and that almost any company that isn't already owned by one of the big untrustworthy corporations can become owned by one of them overnight. Currently we have no good options.
Until we do I'd put the emphasis on portability, not so much on past record.
Is it easy to export into a useful format? If so, do it regularly in case one day it is not.
@simon
Stuart Langridge
@simon yup. This is why I am loath to buy domains for small projects; I killed soonsnap, and put farmbound on kryogenix.org because (among other things) I don't want to be on the hook to pay for domains for them every year for all eternity.
On the other hand, what are the chances that some company reliant on VC money won't get bought or bored in the next ten years? Low.
So neither situation is good.
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