Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 10:15 am
This page presents recommendations to create web pages that can be efficiently archived and accessed across time. It is impossible to preserve the web without the authors’ collaboration.
Last update on September 25, 2023.
Web archives work similarly to web search engines like Google. Therefore, the presented recommendations contribute to creating contents that can be correctly processed of both these types of systems.
The following recommendations were classified in fundamental and advisable. They were written with the purpose of helping any author. Please contact us if you have any doubt.
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Web site organization
Fundamental
Advisable
- Maintain address to the same content across time
- Robots Exclusion Protocol authorizing the harvest of important content
Web page content
Fundamental
- Links published using HTML
- Texts published using textual formats
- Media type and character set encoding correctly identified
Advisable
- Metadata describing the content
- Format specification compliance
- Date of publication explicitly published
- Adequate formats for preservation
General
Advisable
- Usability and accessibility for people with disabilities
- Suggest a site to be preserved
- Save pages on Arquivo.pt – Save Page Now
- Complete the archived version of your website on Arquivo.pt
- Preserve your site on Arquivo.pt Memorial
- Put an end to broken links on your site
Related Work
- Designing Preservable Websites, Library of Congress.
- Guidelines for Preservable Websites, Columbia University Libraries
- Five Tips for Designing Preservable Websites, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
- ArchiveReady.com: website archivability evaluation tool.
- Archivability, Stanford University Libraries.
- Web Archiving Guidance, The National Archives and Central Office of Information (UK).
- Managing Web Resources for Persistent Access, National Library of Australia.
- Creating Preservation-Ready Web Resources, J. A. Smith, M. L. Nelson.