I have personal website and a lot of writings that I want to keep, also for my children one day will read those. How do I make my domain + content exist for a really long time?
Domain + Server must be paid of annually, do I need to switch to other way of hosting?
I suggest you start converting your writing into short digestible Tiktok dance moves...
Joking aside, paper is resilient. Share your digital writings everywhere, then make paper copies that you can donate to libraries. If this fails, that's fine. You won't be around to see it.
You've made my day. On the other hand it's quite bold to say that Tiktok dances will last 100 years. The videos there are 30-40 seconds long matching viewers attention span, so using simple math we can extrapolate that in 100 years they will last 0.03ns at max
If you're wishing your writings to be read by your children, why not print them on paper — and so in duplicate amounts kept in different places — that they will eventually find?
I think, in your case, it would be easier to keep physical copies of those texts than try to keep a digital version of them up for a hundred years. And far less expensive.
Also, you'd be leaving them a more precious thing. I'd be far more excited discovering papers that my father/mother wrote and left for me than, say, seeing them on the internet.
real answer - have generational wealth, attach the documents to your trust. This should last either until your nation’s currency collapses or the trust value does.
Trust documents are usually held privately, and not publicly recorded (as their entire point is to shield this estate planning and asset holding from the public). If you put it in someone's will, upon their death the will would be recorded and it would persist as long as the jurisdiction does maintaining the will on file.
For high reliability, I think I would suggest engraving it into a low reactivity nonvaluable metal, perhaps titanium sheet would be a good choice. Couple that with a backup on printed archival paper using carbon toner or an art-grade ink or dye. Between the two of them they will probably resist damage for 100 years or so.
Brass or bronze would also be a decent option, but you'd have to make the text larger for it to be readable with corrosion. Perhaps braille would be an interesting choice there.
And ceramics are a great choice - clay tablets, when fired, can last millenia.
I think between the three of a metal sheet, clay tablet, and paper book, one of the three is almost certain to survive a century.
Write a book, send a copy to the Internet Archive, upload the digital version. Leave your kids the ISBN or Archive.org item identifier. Donate $2/GB uploaded if you can afford it.
You could also have the Internet Archive crawl your site to preserve it if the above is too much trouble, with it being accessible through Wayback.
The Internet Archive would not require the Internet to continue to store digital data, nor to ingest additional digital data. As long as the bills get paid and people watch the machine, the data would remain on disk and accessible.
The Library of Congress has existed for ~225 years, for example.
One requires more electricity than the other, and custodians of somewhat different skills. A sysadmin is a librarian and custodian with technology skills. If you can vault and custodian physical archives at scale, you can do the same for digital data (imho, based on experience with both). You’re simply building resilient systems on durable primitives.
I’m hopeful for a future where you can potentially carry all recorded knowledge on a device and media you can fit in something somewhat human portable [1]. But until then, humans interested will maintain and continually improve archival and information retrieval systems to preserve and make accessible knowledge.
Arweave network is like Bitcoin, but for data: A permanent and decentralized web inside an open ledger. [0]
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a decentralized protocol, hypermedia, and peer-to-peer (P2P) network for distributed file storage and sharing. The shadow libraries Anna's Archive and Library Genesis host books via IPFS. [1]
I suggest saving the files as text/markdown and sending them to your children as an email zip file. You could also print a book and give copies to your children and grandchildren.
“Only wimps use tape backup. REAL men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.”
- Linus Torvalds
When we go, our children will throw almost everything away. And this is ok.
Information regularly moves storage devices or dies. If your work is not already published / disseminated by the public then it will disappear.
Do multiple or all of the things mentioned in the other comments for redundancy, then set up a Delaware non-charitable purpose trust with a reasonably large endowment. Make sure your lawyers plan the trust carefully with reliable enforcement and position it to be well defended against "capriciousness"[0] claims.
The proper way to do it is how it was done always. Teach your kids. If they grow up and your teachings stand the test of time, they will pass it to their kids, and so on...
There's probably more. That's my family though - we're still using 1935 CWA cookbooks and occasionally pull a plough with horses or bullocks.
We've obviously added and upgraded those skills over generations, but we still have stuff the great grandparents used, and added in a few more contempory skills.
I guess we'll lose some of that if we ever get a mechanical dishwasher though.
I was obviously talking about 3 generations from your own known family, which is the only interpretation given the topic being discussed. How can people miss the point of a question so completely? I am actually interested in understanding what goes on in your mind to talk about "spoken language" in the context of someone asking how to make a website last a few generations.
> What knowledge do you have that was passed down 3 or more generations to you?
and I answered, incompletely, with a list of knowledge and skills I directly learned within my own family, things that have been passed on within various branches of that family over generations.
I was raised by a large extended family, my grandson had, as a baby, a blanket crocheted by my grandmother for my son, the same grandmother who taught me how to darn, sew, weave, etc. just as she taught my father who used those skills in the navy to maintain his kit.
I learnt english and other languages from the generation before me .. and the generation before them as they were not dead when I was a child - and I had living great grandparents.
Do you not count knowledge of language as something passed on by prior generations?
Many of these people left journals or memoirs .. and number have portions of their lives collected in national archives (
Also part of my larger extended family are (still alive) and were (now passed) people that passed down stories and looked after and maintained rock art (both painted and carved) that has survived several tens of thousands of years.
Almost all the geophysical data I gathered is archived, along with data gathered before me, in walk in fireproof safes on tapes, as ascii, on acid free paper, etc.
In short, what goes through my mind is my direct experience with the transmission of and preservation of knowledge.
Deposit funds into your hosting account to cover it. You can host a complex site for $5 per month. Even accounting for inflation, at an average of $20 per month it's $24K. If you deposit these funds into say Linode, it will be used.
Do the same for the domain name registration. If you can't deposit from a card, you can deposit crypto into Namecheap. It will auto-renew in 10 year chunks.
Make sure that systemd and the web server do not fill the disk with logs, that the logs are set to auto truncate.
Beyond this, for the unforseen, you will need an AI to administer the server or to migrate. The AI could operate from the same node and have access to run commands on the system. The AI could also have access to news announcements of the hosting and AI providers, access to much cryptocurrency for payments, to a controllable headless web browser, using all of which it can migrate to an alternative provider.
Of course none of this is necessary in your specific case if you can just print copies.
To put it as simply as possible. Try to stick to plain text as much as possible. Of course, let something like an SSG (Static Site Generator) handle the HTML conversion. Before you die, set/ask someone or an entity to host the HTML on a server that can host HTML (should be in 100+ years too).
As for the domain, keep renewing it a few years ahead whenever you remember. I’m sure there are registrars where you can add credit, and it auto-renews.
Personally (and I’m not sure and haven’t even started), I really liked owning and helping others own their digital assets online. So, I have been meaning to, or would really like to, start an Internet Business (registrar, hosting, email, forms, etc.). Thus, an entity that can live on after me, that does business while owning the current Internet Assets that I own now.
Very correct. Hell, OP is even thinking way too far out of scope for the goal on the request itself. They are thinking of their own progeny. The website doesn't need to survive 100 years, that implies knowledge of the site existing survived their death too. Only a method of seeing it, and reminding their children of it are needed, which honestly only requires the same attitude as keeping a an album of picture around.
OP could just get a box with a Raspberry Pi 5, its power chord, a mini mouse, and a built in mini screen. Seal it all off so nothing inside shakes. Congrats, you got your very own digital version of a personal memoir. The only thing now stopping this from working is The International Electrotechnical Commission somehow doing in the next 100 years what they couldn't the previous 120.
The screen can either, screw it, show the content directly, or MAYBE some indication of what a SSH connection is so the people accessing it have a way to figure it out. It's fine, the hyperfuture AI will do it for them.
Every 5 years, OP opens the box, and put in a new SD card with updated content, labels the previous one, and closes the box. Or, I dunno, swaps out the device for something else newer, if the IEC ninjas did come for him and forced everyone to use Wario Logo shaped plugs.
1. Defend against format obsolescence. Prefer plain-text formats, or at least ones that can be mostly-understood by humans, like markdown or semantic XML. (And not, say, PDFs.) For audio-visual stuff, prefer the simplest kinds of highly standardized and common formats.
2. If you need a website, prefer a static site generator. If you need a dynamic site, periodically export a static version.
3. Don't count entirely on the hosting service, store offline copies (as a standard zip file) alongside other content of interest to heirs, such as a will. Distribute redundant copies to relatives.
1. What's wrong with PDF? The format has been around for 30+ years now, and PDFs that old display just fine on any open-source PDF-viewing program now.
3. Redundant copies aren't going to last 100 years unless they're on some medium that can actually last that long, such as an aluminum (i.e., factory-made, not burned) CD. A flash thumb drive isn't going to last that long, not even close.
If it's for your children, why does it need to exist digitally for 100 years and not, say, 20?
The solution is to print out your writing, put the pages in plastic sleeves, and clip them into binders. Keep the copies in filing cabinets in separate physical locations. It's a one-time cost that isn't subject to digital media issues. You can't accidentally delete the writing or lock yourself out of an account that stores the files like you can with a digital copy
If you had the same goal ~25 years ago what would you have done? Are those top options still around or bankrupt, have their prices and services changed dramatically?
Discs might be fine but good luck reading one with your kids iPhone.
Yes sure there are probably arcane ways to do it (and your 25 year old CD drive is probably going to die before the discs, assuming you still have a computer that it can connect to...IDE anyone?), but is the OP trying to archive their works, or are they trying to make them easily accessible? They say they want a website so I guess they want something simple and easy to read, and not some equivalent of a dusty archive box locked away in a storage facility somewhere.
Encode your data as qr codes and etch them onto diamonds. Your data lasts virtually forever in the form of family heirlooms.
Using modern femtosecond lasers, you can etch codes as small as 250 to 500 microns.
Total Capacity (5 Diamonds): 180 QR codes (36 per diamond) = 230 KB of data.
Putting static copies on Github Pages, Cloudflare Pages, and the Internet Archive would make pretty good odds it's preserved. The only real way to make sure would be to set up and fund some sort of trust to basically hire someone to run it after you're gone.
I think that this is probably the most realistic / sensible suggestion here if you want to preserve digital data for as long as possible.
(and assuming you don't have millions of dollars handy to put towards this goal - I could probably build you something pretty OK, but the cost might get into tens of millions or more depending on how many nines you want on that "chance of it existing in 100 years" figure)
I also agree with others who say "print out multiple redundant copies and put them in filing cabinets and/or bank vaults". This is probably the most reliable way to have a high probability of it lasting that long without spending a lot.
The core issue that you're going to have is that it's impossible to predict whether any institution you might trust to hold on to the data will still exist in 100 years. Having multiple copies on multiple redundant hosts gives you a higher chance, but it's still not possible to say what that chance is. And that's before we start thinking about things like climate change and the water wars everyone loves to predict.
interesting. I assume the things I host at home (which is everything) will be recoverable by family at time of my death if they're so interested. I left some instructions in will, but not for things I ought to, on reconsider, like "what" the thermostat is and how to access it beyond the web interface...
-but I do not plan for longer-term than that; I assume if kid cares, she'll bother repackaging it. I am curious about some of the non-book solutions. I think you might be able to rig up a solar solution, burying a box underground with an SBC/mini-PC with SATA or NVMe connectors; the SSD should be fully read from at least once a year. The solar should be degraded-but-fine after 50 years (excluding animal damage, which I find is pretty substantial if you keep them close to the ground... will want redundancy), but the battery will not be, but I haven't been around for long enough to really have a "feel" for how long LiFePO4/other cells will last... I wouldn't be surprised if they could go >20 years with very shallow discharge cycles in a degraded state (perfectly usable for having an SBC read drives once a year), but I'd be very surprised if you could get a standard cell to 50 years.
I tried getting a tape drive a few years ago. I bought a used one off Amazon, but HPE refused to give me the software for it; I wound up refunding it rather grumpily. It'd be pretty surprising if the tape drive lasted for 100 years (edit: interfaceable probably the bigger issue), but under careful conditions with ~no use, the tape cartridge itself should last 30-50 years (with no guarantees; you'll want redundancy on different batches/brands).
I would also add software solutions like PaperBack to the pile of paper storage ideas. Essentially, you create a giant compressed QR code printed to a sheet of paper, and this is like going from storing audio as uncompressed audio on CDs/DVDs to mp3 (DVD-MP3 was underrated!); instead of storing 500 words, you can store an entire book. There's not terrible complexity here, so it should be trivial to reverse-engineer, especially if you include a couple page of notes on how the algorithm works. -or heck, in 100 years, maybe a 50-year-old LLM can simply look at it and read it like you wrote words.
write it to a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC or something similar and put it somewhere safe, like a bank, with a reader. why do you need to host it if it is for your kids? maybe a real answer is to pay someone or make some elaborate rube goldberg redundancy apparatus on some p2p mesh network or whatever.
First of all, nothing that any of us have to say today will have any value in 100 years. (And probably a lot less than that.)
Putting that inconvenient fact aside, there’s virtually no chance that a “website” you build today will work in 100 years, so you can’t think in terms of the digital representations we use now. The future might as well be populated by aliens. Instead think in terms of self-renewing systemic processes and incentives:
Create a trust that upon your death periodically (every 5 years?) doles out a pot of money to your descendant(s) who ensure that your writings are published on whatever form of Internet/“Web” exists at the time. Hire a law firm to enforce the terms and hunt down your descendant(s) at the appropriate times for a cut of the money. In theory, this could continue forever as long as the money grows and the amount remains incentivizing.
The other option since that will be expensive is to attach your writings to genealogical records on Ancestry, or register them with the Mormon church (who are major genealogical record keepers). There are many people who diligently steward those records down the years, and there is a fair chance that they will be rediscovered by someone in your line of succession. Having a lot of kids will help the cause—and your picaresque adventures in doing so would give you something to write about that people might actually want to read about in 100 years.
Or, you know, just print a book and give it to your kids as a family heirloom.
inscribe html into Ethereum calldata. its saved as base64 and can be read directly in browser. the trick will be finding an endpoint to view it. no one knows what will happen ofc but check out chainhost.online
Simpler is better. Ideally, it should be a static site, and hostable on any domain.
Failing that, choose technologies that have been around for a while. PHP, Ruby, and Java have been around for 20+ years, and are still going strong. There is no hope that anything touching Node or npm will run in a year.
They'll be loads of unexpected things that come up that can't be anticipated.
Just look at some of the websites that were abandoned in the early 2000-2010s but which are still actively hosted today but that are broken now due to modern browsers refusing to load cross-origin resources, or the server's ciphers are no longer accepted etc. They're still online, you just can't see the content with today's computers. You need a human (...or potentially an AI?) there to intervene and resolve those problems to keep it going.
Sure you might say well my writings are not using HTTPS or I don't make cross-origin requests, but that totally misses the point. Who knows in 50 years you may not even be able to read ASCII text in consumer browsers any more without specialist archival/library tools, just like we can't use what we're at the time totally legitimate SSL ciphers.
I think that archiving your writings is different from having your site active and casually available.
The best way to preserve something is not with technology or any particular storage medium.
The only way to ensure something is preserved is for there to be living humans who care about the thing enough to put forth the effort to preserve it.
Information that is stored in very fragile old formats is well preserved because there are living humans who are putting forth the effort. Information that nobody cares about, but is stored very securely, will be culled eventually as even libraries and archives have limited capacity.
If you want your personal website to be preserved, the best thing you can do is make it so good that your children, or someone else, cares about it enough to keep it.
Joking aside, paper is resilient. Share your digital writings everywhere, then make paper copies that you can donate to libraries. If this fails, that's fine. You won't be around to see it.
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