You invest hours of hard work, valuable resources and manpower to develop a credible web presence. What if something goes wrong in your internal setup, and all your data vanishes in a mini-second? Heartbreaking right? The reason why most businesses around the world have established web archiving for their websites.

Thus, you can say that archiving is the method in which you save your important data, in another setup, so in case something goes wrong, you have a backup plan with all your data safe.

This is viable for your Whatsapp chats, emails, and even for other documents on your phone, laptop or PC. Now, the primary question will be what is web archiving? Here’s your answer: like any other archiving process, the basic ingredients remain the same. But, everything you archive here is a part of the World Wide Web, ranging from JavaScripts and HTML pages to Web pages.

Let me take you through the different types of web archiving, followed by the advantages of web archiving as a whole.

1-  Client Side Web Archiving

It’s not wrong to conclude that this is the most popular web archiving method out there. With its extraordinary advantages like remote functioning, easy adaptability, with minimum resources like an open web, with freely available data, you can archive your website using this method.

In fact, the national archive uses this method to archive documents for the UK Government, like websites, images, and other documents. In this method, to access data, you start from the SEED or URL link and keep archiving until you reach the boundary of domain operations.

2- Transaction Based Web Archiving

For transaction-based web archiving, you not only need a website, but also a respective web server. This is what makes it slightly unpopular in comparison to its counterparts, because there is a mandatory requirement to take permission from the server owner, which is not only time consuming, but also there is no guarantee of a positive response.

However, this doesn’t neutralize the advantages that are: Sites with multiple external users, data can be saved and the portions that are viewed or saved only get stored. This is the best for the internal activities of corporate, as there is no or minimal wastage of data.

3- Server Side Web Archiving

With similarities from Transaction based web archiving, in this method, you can directly copy and archive data straight from the server itself. That again calls for a permission from the web server. It will be difficult for you to achieve dynamic entries on servers over long periods of time. But yes, vital data, which wouldn’t be accessible in any other way, can be accessed under server-side web archiving.

A few major ones out of the long list of advantages:

1- Security of Information

The idea behind web archiving is long term preservation and security of information. Server clashes, website malfunctions or virus attacks can lead to the loss of content. Web archiving prevents such mishaps with a handy backup immediately ready. Basically, you archive your web content in another server by outsourcing contracts to specialized companies.

2-  What’s in it for the Future?

As it’s said, ‘future can never be predicted, but it can be prevented!’ Web archiving functions on this motto, none of us know what the future holds, especially for a brand, individual or legal authority. Exactly when perseverance becomes invaluable. You see, the archived data acts as a piece of evidence for times in crisis. It is like the book of accounts for a company, that is proof of their financial transactions.

3- Keeps an Eye on the Competition

In the 21^st century, there’s no place for average, there’s only one king. Thus, if you want to win the race, you NEED to know what your competitors are doing. Web archiving can also help you store your competitors’ web activities. This can come out to be extremely helpful for the content which automatically deletes itself, like on various social media platforms. You cannot survey them at that exact moment, but saving them for the future gives you sufficient time.

The Bottom Line:

Unlike many other aspects of corporate, web archiving is a win-win. It is authentic, legal, and moreover involves minimal costs. There is practically no reason why you shouldn’t consider it.