Preservation Guides

Step-by-step methodologies for capturing, restoring, and authenticating early web artifacts. Built by archivists, for historians.

1994–1997 Beginner

GeoCities Personal Page Recovery

Learn how to locate, download, and restore personal homepages from the defunct GeoCities platform using archived snapshots and FTP mirrors.

HTML 3.2GIF89aGuestbooks

1990–1993 Advanced

HTML 1.0/2.0 Syntax Preservation

Technical breakdown of pre-CSS web markup. Covers proper handling of deprecated tags, inline styles, and Mosaic/NCSA rendering quirks.

TechnicalNCSAMarkup

1998–2000 Intermediate

Audio & Animation Asset Recovery

Methodologies for extracting embedded MIDI files, .AVI clips, and early JavaScript animations from archived framesets and table layouts.

MIDIAVIFrames

1994–1997 Beginner

WebRing & Community Hub Backup

Preserving interconnected community networks. Covers navigation scripts, manual link mapping, and directory structure replication.

WebRingBBSLinks

1998–2000 Advanced

Netscape Navigator 4.x Compatibility Shims

Advanced technique for emulating browser-specific rendering engines. Covers document.layers, inline frames, and early DOM APIs.

NetscapeJS 1.2DOM

1990–1993 Intermediate

Pre-Web Protocol Archiving (FTP/Gopher)

Transitioning hierarchical text-based menus into web-compatible formats while preserving original directory structures and metadata.

FTPGopherASCII

📜 Core Preservation Standards

All archived submissions and guide methodologies adhere to the following verification protocols to ensure historical accuracy and technical integrity.

01

Integrity Hashing

SHA-256 checksums recorded at capture time. Zero-tolerance for post-capture modification or compression artifacts.
02

Contextual Metadata

Every artifact must include server headers, timestamp, user-agent string, and geographic routing data.
03

Render Verification

Cross-browser testing using period-correct emulators (Mosaic 2.0, Netscape 3.0, IE 4.0) before public release.