Since the world wide web contains a huge amount of information, content, and data, you may want to find a way to ‘capture’ information for future use. In this case, using a specific method to harness this content and secure it for later referral is crucial to individuals and businesses alike.
What is a website archive?
Learning website archiving is key to retaining and analyzing data for your individual or business needs. Web archiving is the process of keeping websites in a secure archive or folder. By ‘capturing’ this data at certain times, you can retain the data on a specific web page.
The screen captures allow users to keep the original content, context, and visual appearance of the web page. Keeping screenshots in a secured folder and website archive is a foolproof way to access these captures for long-term needs or reference in the future.
Similar to traditional archiving, like keeping important items in physical folders or safes, the basic concept behind a website archive is similar. In both instances, you choose the specific information to keep and store, ensuring it is secured from the public, but available to people for future use when needed. See more here about the website archive.
What is the purpose of a website archive?
- Complying with business regulations and proof of adherence
- Fighting legal battles and showing burden of proof
- Showing a screenshot of information is often not enough to prove a point, so having a website archive is concrete evidence of your argument
- Get an edge over the other businesses in your field
Types of website archives
- Client-side: Client-side archiving is one of the most common types of web archives. This type of web archive is widely used due to the simplicity and intuitive nature of the program, helping you create an archive of any web page that is available to the general public.
- Transaction-based: In this type of process, clients can archive and save websites that require permission. After gaining permission from the server and the one posting the content, you can use your web archive to capture transactions between the user and server.
- Server-side: Just like the transaction-based website archive, this type of program requires consent from the server/owner. Since this process is more complicated than client-side web archives, it is less popular.
Choosing the specific type of website archive you need can affect the ease of use, efficiency, cost, and effectiveness of your specific needs. If you want to form a website archive for a public domain, using a client-side archive is the best choice. However, for more secure operations, you must decide between the transaction-based and server-side options.
Conclusion
Knowing as much as you can about web archives – like the process, importance, and different types – can help you make smart business decisions about which information you want to save and store for later reference. By storing data and capturing specific information, you can later analyze and evaluate secure information to help you get ahead in business, fight legal battles, or comply with business regulations.
