http://web.archive.org/
(on Wikipedia)

As useful as Google spell checking is, it doesn’t measure up to the value the Wayback Machine has had for me.

I love the Wayback Machine.  I want it to have my babies.

---

An example ∞

Take, for example, this gem: ASCII Movies.

There are two things that are cool about this website.

1. It’s in ASCII text.  That’s cool for so many reasons.

2. Hovering the mouse overtop of the text-titles shows a spinner.  That’s totally pointless but really cool.  You can see a | in the final i in “Ascii”.  My screenshots don’t capture my mouse so you can’t see me hovering.

I’m saving this one so that I can reverse engineer it and base some of my own work off of this idea/technology.

Here’s a real gem.  Guess what movie it is.

Maybe if it’s smaller you can tell more easily.

(view the animation – you may need to use the dropdown box to reduce its size.)

I know that you can do something vaguely similar with MPlayer, and the ASCII Art “aa” plugin.

\mplayer  -vo aa  movie.avi

But this website has the only implementation of web-viewable true text movies that I know of.

This is exactly the sort of stuff which vanishes from the web forever, with and without the help of authors and webmasters disappearing.

View an archive exactly as it was ∞

Append id_ within the URL. For example:

• https://web.archive.org/web/20050305083446/http://www.romanm.ch/

• https://web.archive.org/web/20050302234209id_/http://www.romanm.ch/

Other URL modifiers ∞

• mp_

  • I’ve seen this for YouTube videos.

• fw_

  • I don’t know what these are for, but they appear to me to be the same as id_.

Bookmarklets ∞

(Bookmarklets)

2018-01-29 on Pale Moon 27.6.2 (32-bit) on Linux.

Save the current page ∞

Tested 2022-11-16 on Brave Version 1.45.133 Chromium: 107.0.5304.141 (Official Build) (64-bit)

javascript:  
/* Save the current page in the Wayback Machine. If you're looking at an archive, save a fresh copy. */  
window.location =   'https://web.archive.org/save/' +  window.location.href  
/* Do not include Archive.org saved pages */ 
.replace(   /https?:\/\/web\.archive\.org\/web\/(\d{14})\//   ,'' )

Tested 2018-01-29 on Pale Moon 27.6.2 (32-bit) on Linux.

javascript:location.href='https://web.archive.org/save/'+window.location.host+window.location.pathname;

_archive.org save a given url ∞

FIXME – doesn’t accept http://example.com because it changes the //

_archive.org save a given url
save

https://web.archive.org/save/%s

Save the currently-edited page ∞

From the WordPress editor, save the page:

Tested 2018-01-29 on Pale Moon 27.6.2 (32-bit) on Linux.

javascript:location.href='https://web.archive.org/save/'+location.href.replace('wp-admin/post.php?post=','?p=').replace('&action=edit','')

Stuff ∞

Tested 2022-11-16 on Brave Version 1.45.133 Chromium: 107.0.5304.141 (Official Build) (64-bit)

_spiralofhope save from WordPress editor into Wayback
se

javascript:location.href='https://web.archive.org/save/'+location.href.replace('wp-admin/post.php?post=','?p=').replace('&action=edit','').replace('&classic-editor','')

TODO ∞

(not working) 2022-11-16 on Brave Version 1.45.133 Chromium: 107.0.5304.141 (Official Build) (64-bit)

_archive.org view current page – FIXME
a-fixme

javascript:  
window.location =   window.location.href  
/* Archive.org saved pages */ 
.replace(   /https?:\/\/web\.archive\.org\/web\/(\d{14})\//   ,'' )  
/* Junk including and after a ? 
*/ .replace(   /\?(.*)/   ,'' )  
/* alert( ) */

Troubleshooting ∞

“Job failed” when attempting to save a page ∞

1. Visit https://web.archive.org/save
2. Type in the URL

3. [_] Save error pages (HTTP Status=4xx, 5xx)

“The client does not have access rights” (HTTP status=403) ∞

The capture failed because Save Page Now does not have access rights https://blog.spiralofhope.com/707/the-internet-archive-wayback-machine.html (HTTP status=403).

• 2025-04-21 – This could also be Security Header Generator.

https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/139797/when-saving-with-the-wayback-machine-claims-the-client-does-not-have-access-ri

It is a problem with Bad Behavior, which is strange because disabling all addons did not resolve this. I think Bad Behavior was editing .htaccess and so the changes persisted even when addons were disabled.)

”old

I think maybe I fucked with my .htaccess.

[didn’t work] If you use WordPress Zero Spam, visit your settings, e.g. /wp-admin/options-general.php?page=wordpress-zero-spam-settings and be careful with “IP Block Method”.

[unsolved] “This URL has been already captured 10 times today” ∞

This was seen after the “The client does not have access rights” (HTTP status=403) problem when I was refreshing the page for future attempts. It was, in fact, not saved at all. I guess it was all the failed attempts from above.

Alternatives ∞

• https://perma.cc/
• archive.today (etc)

• https://www.webcitation.org/

  • 2020-01-23 — They stopped taking archival requests at some point.