Back Up Websites You Love Before They're Gone
Original: If you love a website, back it up
Why This Matters
Digital preservation is a shared responsibility; personal archiving tools lower that barrier significantly.
A web archivist shares how teapuppies.com, a fansite online since 2004, disappeared and became a gambling ad domain. The post urges everyday users to archive sites they value using free tools like the ArchiveWeb.page browser extension.
The post opens with a quiet loss: teapuppies.com, a fansite for the Ochaken anime and toy line that had been online since 2004 and essentially unchanged since 2005, recently vanished. Its domain now serves gambling ads. The author, who works in web archiving professionally, admits they had the tools to prevent this personal loss and simply didn't act.
The central argument is blunt: web archiving isn't something that only institutions like the Internet Archive can do. Regular users can do it too, and should. Files are saved in the WARC format, a standard that plays well with many tools and allows archived sites to remain fully interactive — clickable links, images, the works.
The author's recommended entry point is the ArchiveWeb.page browser extension for Chrome. The workflow is minimal: install the extension, navigate to a page, hit 'Start Archiving,' click through any interactive elements, visit additional pages, then stop. Archives can be previewed immediately and downloaded for storage elsewhere. The author discloses the tools are made by their employer but notes most are free and reflects genuine preference, not promotion.