While the web is a great platform for creating interesting, unique, and innovative projects, there is also a risk that today’s technology will be obsolete and unusable in the near future. To keep my site up for as long as possible, I sat down with Katie Farr and Zach Sharrow from The College of Wooster Libraries to discuss how I will preserve and submit On This Land. It is especially important for me that I find a way to keep my project up online to maintain public access. It is also important for my Indigenous community partners that my website stays up after the duration of the IS process so that they can continue to see the result of our partnership over these several past months. Web projects that preserve Indigenous traditions, oral histories, and objects especially need to have a clear plan for preservation or else these can be lost.
Website Preservation: The Basics
Websites can be preserved in multiple ways. First, the code associated with a WordPress site can be imported into another WordPress site. Static copies of the website can also be made, in the forms of PDFs, website scans, or even word documents. The Wayback Machine is an example of how large organizations such as the Internet Archive work to preserve websites, although anyone can upload a website that will then be scanned.
Public vs. Private Preservation
Every independent study project submitted to The College of Wooster goes into their OpenWorks database. When I submit my Independent Study, I will submit multiple forms of my work in case the website breaks down: I will submit the link itself, as well as the XML file containing the code for my website, and PDF files that show what the website will look like. That way, the library will have a copy that can be referenced if the website stops working. However, I will still need a way for my site to be seen even by those who cannot access OpenWorks. This can be done by creating a new site from my imported XML file if something ever happens to Wooster Educational Technology’s web server, which currently hosts my site. I can also share static versions of my websites with the public through PDF files or screen captures uploaded to YouTube. However, there are also ways to ensure that my site will stay as-is for a long time.
Website Longevity
In my conversations with Dr. Holt, Dr. Breitenbucher and the library staff, I have found that it is important to use platforms that are likely to be in use in the future. Given the number of sites that use WordPress, it is safe to say that WordPress will most likely be around in the future. Additionally, Dr. Holt especially let me know that web platforms that are developed by private companies are more likely to be suddenly taken down or obsolete. WordPress itself is an open-source platform, meaning that the code is accessible to the public, while BlueHost, though it is a company, hosts almost 2 million websites, including mine. ArcGIS StoryMaps is less prolific than WordPress, which stopped me from transferring all of my content to StoryMaps.
Additionally, I have tried to limit the number of plugins, or additional features, to my website, as these also are more likely to break than the core blocks themselves. For a while, I was considering implementing pinned images of pages from Douglass’s book or page-wide animations, but both of these would put my site at greater risk than I am comfortable with.
Hopefully, with these safeguards in place, my website will stay up for multiple years so that different audiences have a chance to engage with it.