Have you stopped to think about what will happen to your web content in 10 years from now? Twenty years? Fifty?
It occurs to me that a large chunk, probably a majority, of everything I’ve ever posted online is now lost, deleted, or (if I’m lucky) saved by the Wayback Machine. This bothers me, because I’d like to think that the stuff I create has a permanent home, at a permanent URL, and that when I say permanent, I mean it.
But if I’m realistic about it, the chances of this happening to most of my stuff are pretty slim. There’s the historical fact that most of my old stuff has disappeared, but also the unease I feel at the thought of paying for bells-and-whistles hosting for the rest of my life. I don’t want to spend that money on that thing. I have no wish to spend time looking after WordPress, and the PHP and SQL gubbins that it runs on, for the next 10 years, let alone after that.
But I do want some things to be permanent. I regret that the blog post I had announcing Barney’s birth, and the few dozen congratulatory comments it generated, has vanished. It bothers me that, unless I commit to maintaining WordPress for the rest of my life, the small obituary I wrote for my stepdad will vanish too.
Weblog tools are terribly convenient and quick. But anyone who uses them has to choose between one of the following expectations:
- my posts are ephemeral and transient; I use this blogging tool but have no delusions that my content will survive forever
- my posts are intended to be permanent; I use this blogging tool and intend to continue maintaining it, and paying for the hosting for it, for the rest of my life
So what point am I trying to make here? That I should abandon a blogging tool and just write static HTML pages? Possibly. That I should switch back to Blogger, which allows me the convenience of a blogging tool but which publishes static HTML files to my server via FTP? I honestly don’t know what the best approach is.
I think I’ll be prepared to pay for a domain forever - I’d like to keep my email address - but hosting? WordPress? All the stuff that comes with it? The older I get, the less time I have for it all.
3 Comments
Couldn’t agree more about the time and effort needed - face it G, whether it’s popular or not (yours is, mine isn’t) it takes mental effort and consideration. But doesn’t it also depend on the hosting company? Mine comes with wordpress as a one click install. I haven’t had to think about it. So long as I pay I shouldn’t have to and I ‘think’ I’m paying for that security. Maybe I’m not.
Save anything you write locally, then put it on a CD, then file it a tin box, then put the tin box in a safe. But will the CD be readible in 50 years time…
Yes yes. But *backup* isn’t the problem; I can (and do) back everything up frequently. But having my stuff in a tin box is no good if it’s no longer viewable on the web at the URL where it started life - that’s what I mean by permanent. I want to ensure that certain things I post online can stay online at the same URL for as long as I’m in control of them.
OK, but you don’t keep everything in the same house, you move it to different addresses. Or is this just a software issue - you have everything exported as a text file and importing it into new blog software doesn’t work?
I was joking about the tin box thing. I was suggesting that everything in the end becomes obsolete so the idea of trying to hold on to it becomes frustrating. And do you ‘really’ want a permanent record anyway? I’m not so sure I do
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