Defunct blogging platforms collects places where one could once post, but can post no more. Curator Wesley Aptekar-Cassels posted an accompanying essay, How Websites Die.
I think a lot about the lifecycle of websites. I'm frustrated by so much of the short-term thinking I see in the world today, and the way we think about websites is a part of that: it's "normal" for them to just go up in smoke as soon as their authors stop paying attention. People switch platforms and providers and break links without a second thought. It pains me to see people build websites with no feeling of obligation to them — when you put something out into the world, it is your responsibility to care for it.
At the same time, I wonder if this obsession with permanence is misplaced. I recently started building a website that lives at wesleyac.com, and one of the things that made me procrastinate for years on putting it up was not being sure if I was ready to commit to it. I solved that conundrum with a page outlining my thoughts on its stability and permanence:
I have fragments of websites I can no longer find any reference to online, aren't in the Wayback Machine, but seemed to me important and memorable. Some I remember but can't find any downloaded copies or screenshots, and I couldn't prove they existed in any meaningful sense at all.
