{"id":302005,"date":"2020-01-23T09:02:08","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T16:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/?p=302005"},"modified":"2020-01-23T11:34:30","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T18:34:30","slug":"this-page-is-designed-to-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/this-page-is-designed-to-last\/","title":{"rendered":"This Page is Designed to Last"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jeff Huang, while going through his collection of bookmarks, sadly finds a lot of old pages gone from the internet. Bit rot. It’s pretty bad. Most<\/em> of what gets published on the web disappears. Thankfully, the Internet Archive<\/strong> gets a lot of it. Jeff has seven things that he thinks will help make a page last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

1) Return to vanilla HTML\/CSS
2) Don’t minimize that HTML
3) Prefer one page over several
4) End all forms of hotlinking
5) Stick with the 13 web safe fonts +2
6) Obsessively compress your images
7) Eliminate the broken URL risk<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I don’t take issue with any of that advice in general, but to me, they don’t all feel like things that have much to do with whether a site will last or not. Of them, #4 seems like the biggest deal, and #5 is… strange. (Fonts fall back on the web; what fonts you use should have no bearing on a site’s ability to last.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sort of agree with #1 and #2, but not on the surface. Both of them imply a build process<\/em>. Build processes get old, they stop working, and they become a brick of technical debt<\/a>. I still love them and can’t imagine day-to-day work without them, but they are things that stands in the way of people wanting to deal with an old site. Highly relevant: Simplicity<\/a>, from Bastian Allgeier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything listed is technological<\/em>. If we’re talking technological advice to keeping a site online for the long haul, I’d say jamstack is the obvious answer. Prerender everything into static files. Rely on no third-party stuff anything, except a host. (Disclosure: Netlify is a current sponsor of this site, but I’m tellin’ ya, toss a simple static site without a complex build process up on Netlify, which has a generous free tier, and that site will absolutely be there for the long haul. )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t diddle with your URLs either. Gosh darn it if I don’t see a lot of 404s because someone up and changed up all their URLs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I feel there is something beyond the technological<\/strong> that is the real trick to a site that lasts: you need to have some stake in the game<\/em>. You don’t let your URLs die because you don’t want<\/em> them to. They matter to you. You’ll tend to them if you have to. They benefit you in some way, so you’re incentivized to keep them around. That’s what makes a page last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Huang, while going through his collection of bookmarks, sadly finds a lot of old pages gone from the internet. Bit rot. It’s pretty bad. Most of what gets published on the web disappears. Thankfully, the Internet Archive gets a lot of it. Jeff has seven things that he thinks will help make a page […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":292359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"sig_custom_text":"","sig_image_type":"featured-image","sig_custom_image":0,"sig_is_disabled":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"c2c_always_allow_admin_comments":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[17],"tags":[895,905],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/lots-of-bubbles.png?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302005"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302506,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302005\/revisions\/302506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}