Recently a client requested a copy of his website. We had developed the site three years ago, the site was discontinued after a year. Now out of the blue, he wanted to host it again.
We checked up our backup, but could not find the files. The client was pushing for the files! What to do?
Then came an idea! The Way Back Machine!
The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
Archive.org not only archives websites, but also movies, speeches and text. I entered the now defunct website address of the client on the site, and jumped with joy with what I saw next. Archive.org had enough versions of the website for me to pick from.
I then tried to use some offline browsing software to download the whole site 😉 Tried with three different software, but it did not work because they do not allow spidering (and hence downloading) the site. So had to manually download all the pages and images and get things to work.
But archive.org saved the day!