![]() Screenshot of archive.today | |
Type of site | Web archiving |
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Available in | Multilingual |
URL |
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Commercial | Yes |
Registration | No |
Launched | 2012 |
archive.today (formerly archive.is) is an archive site which stores snapshots of web pages.[1] It retrieves one page at a time similar to WebCite, smaller than 50MB each, but with support for JavaScript-heavy sites such as Google Maps and progressive web applications such as Twitter.
Archive.today records simultaneously two different 'snapshots' of a web-page. One is "Webpage" which includes any functional live links that are in the original. The other is "Screenshot" which provides a static and non-interactive visualization of the representation.[2]
Features
Functionality
Archive.today can capture individual pages in response to explicit user requests.[3][4][5] Since its beginning, Archive.Today supports crawling pages with URLs containing a now-deprecated hash-bang fragment (#!).[6]
Archive.today records only text and images, excluding video, XML, RTF, spreadsheet (xls or ods) and other non-static content. It keeps track of the history of snapshots saved, returning to the user a request for confirmation before adding a new snapshot of an already saved Internet address.[7]
Pages are captured with 1024 pixels of browser width. CSS is converted to inline CSS, removing responsive web design and selectors such as :hover
and :active
. Content generated using JavaScript during the crawling process appears in a frozen state.[8]
HTML class names are preserved inside the old-class
attribute.
When text is selected, a JavaScript applet[clarification needed] generates a URL fragment seen in the browser's URL bar that automatically highlights that portion of the text when visited again.
Web pages cannot be duplicated from archive.is to web.archive.org as second-level backup, as archive.is places an exclusion for Wayback Machine and does not save its snapshots in WARC format. The reverse—from web.archive.org to archive.is—is possible,[9][circular reference] but the copy usually takes more time than a direct capture. Some web sites get deleted from Internet Archive's listings retroactively or blocked from being saved due to their robots.txt file, but Archive.today does not use this.[citation needed]
The research toolbar enables advanced keywords operators, using *
as the wildcard character. A couple of quotation marks address the search to an exact sequence of keywords present in the title or in the body of the webpage, whereas the insite operator restricts it to a specific Internet domain.[10]
Once a web page is archived, it cannot be deleted directly by any Internet user.[11]
While saving a dynamic list, archive.today searchbox shows only a result that links the previous and the following section of the list (e.g. 20 links for page).[12] The other web pages saved are filtered, and sometimes may be found by one of their occurrences.[citation needed]
The search feature is backed by Google CustomSearch. If it delivers no results, archive.is attempts to utilize Yandex Search.[citation needed]
If a page has already been archived, archive.is asks the user to confirm archiving a new revision, instead of immediately archiving it.[citation needed]
While loading a page, a list of URLs to individual page elements among their content sizes, HTTP statuses and MIME types is shown. This list can only be viewed during the crawling process.[citation needed]
One can download archived pages as a ZIP file, except pages archived since 29 November 2019, when Archive.Today changed their browser engine from PhantomJS to Chromium.[13]
Since July 2013, archive.today supports the Memento Project application programming interface (API).[14][15]
History
Archive.today was founded in 2012. The site originally branded itself as archive.today, but in May 2015, changed the primary mirror to archive.is.[16]
In January 2019, it began to deprecate the archive.is domain in favor of the archive.today mirror.[17]
Worldwide availability
Australia
In March 2019, the site was blocked for six months by several Australian internet providers in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings in an attempt to limit distribution of the footage of the attack.[18][19]
China
According to GreatFire.org, archive.today has been blocked in China since March 2016,[20] archive.li since September 2017,[21] and archive.fo since July 2018.[22]
Finland
On 21 July 2015, the operators blocked access to the service from all Finnish IP addresses, stating on Twitter that they did this in order to avoid escalating a dispute they allegedly had with the Finnish government.[23]
Russia
In Russia, only HTTP access is possible; HTTPS connections are blocked.[24][25]
Worldwide
Archive.today currently blocks requests from Cloudflare's recursive DNS resolver, 1.1.1.1.[26] Archive.today insists that recursive DNS resolvers include the geolocation of the user making the DNS lookup. For privacy reasons, Cloudflare specifically does not include the geolocation of the user making the request. As a result, the archive.today DNS servers intentionally return invalid responses when queried by a Cloudflare recursive DNS resolver.[27]
Additionally, since late 2018, Archive.today has implemented a data cap limitation, presumably to help protect against denial-of-service attacks. Individual users can only archive and/or retrieve approximately 10 to 20 megabytes of data per day. After that limitation is reached, their web server blocks the individual user's IP address by no longer responding.[citation needed]
See also
References
- ^ Brinkmann, Martin (22 April 2015). "Create publicly available web page archives with Archive.is". Ghacks. Archived from the original on 12 April 2019. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
- ^ Brunelle, Justin F.; Kelly, Mat; Weigle, Michele C.; Nelson, Michael L. (25 January 2015). "The impact of JavaScript on archivability" (PDF). International Journal on Digital Libraries. 17 (2): 95–117. doi:10.1007/s00799-015-0140-8. S2CID 8433375. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 May 2019.
- ^ Dascalescu, Dan (18 February 2013). "Web page archiving – Dan Dascalescu's Wiki (review)". Wiki.dandascalescu.com. Archived from the original on 22 September 2013. Retrieved 3 October 2013.
- ^ Koebler, Jason (29 October 2014). "Dear GamerGate: Please Stop Stealing Our Shit". Motherboard. Archived from the original on 27 May 2019. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
There is no way for a website to protect itself from having an Archive.today user mirror the site.
- ^ "archive.is/faq". archive.is. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
- ^ "Home page of Archive.is in 2013". Archived from the original on 12 January 2013.
It can save pages from Web 2.0 sites even with hashbang URLs, for example http://twitter.com/#!/medvedevrussia
- ^ "Example snapshot history on archive.is".
- ^ JavaScript-generated loading animation of Dailymotion video appearing in a frozen state
- ^ "Example: Page saved from Web Archive to Archive.is". Archived from the original on 20 May 2013. Retrieved 23 October 2019.
- ^ For example, the string insite: https://en.wikipedia.org "World Cup" returns the "World+Cup"/ related snapshots
- ^ "Some Frequently Asked Question". archive.is blog. 24 January 2013. Archived from the original on 26 September 2013. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
- ^ "Example of dynamic list retrieved by Worldcat".
- ^ "Archive.is blog". 17 July 2020. Archived from the original on 3 October 2020.
- ^ Nelson, Michael L. (9 July 2013). "Archive.is Supports Memento". Research and Teaching Updates. Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University. Archived from the original on 27 July 2013. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
- ^ "archive.is". Memento Protocol Information. Memento Development Group. Archived from the original on 15 September 2013. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
- ^ "Why did you change the URL back from archive-today to archive-is?". Archive.is Blog. 3 May 2015. Archived from the original on 1 June 2015. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
- ^ @archiveis (4 January 2019). "Please do not use archive.IS mirror for linking, use others mirrors [.TODAY .FO .LI .VN .MD .PH]. .IS might stop working soon" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 6 January 2019 – via Twitter.
- ^ "ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent". Private Internet Access. 19 March 2019. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
- ^ "New Zealand ISPs Say They're Blocking Sites That Fail To Remove Christchurch Shooting Video". Gizmodo Australia. 19 March 2019. Archived from the original on 18 May 2019. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
- ^ "archive.is is 100% blocked in China". GreatFire Analyzer. 12 August 2018. Archived from the original on 12 August 2018.
- ^ "archive.li is 100% blocked in China". Great Fire Analyzer. 12 August 2018. Archived from the original on 12 August 2018.
- ^ "archive.fo is 100% blocked in China". Great Fire Analyzer. 12 August 2018. Archived from the original on 12 August 2018.
- ^ Lapintie, Lassi (22 July 2015). "Suomalaisilta estettiin haktivistien suosimalla verkkosivulla käynti" [Finns' access to website used by hacktivists blocked]. Iltalehti (in Finnish). Archived from the original on 27 May 2019. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
- ^ Elistratov, Vladimir (29 January 2016). "Roskomnadzor zablokiroval servis archive.is, khranyashchiy kopii veb-saytov" Роскомнадзор заблокировал сервис archive.is, хранящий копии веб-сайтов. TJournal (in Russian). Archived from the original on 30 August 2017. Retrieved 30 January 2016.
- ^ Cushing, Tim (4 February 2016). "Russia Blocks Another Archive Site Because It Might Contain Old Pages About Drugs". Techdirt. Archived from the original on 23 March 2019. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
- ^ @archiveis (15 July 2018). "'Having to do' is not so direct here. Absence of EDNS and massive mismatch (not only on AS/Country, but even on the continent level) of where DNS and related HTTP requests come from causes so many troubles so I consider EDNS-less requests from Cloudflare as invalid" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702