The goal of the Paleoweb.org project is to collect websites to expose to coming generations the state of art of Website use, from the early times of Internet.

L'objectif du projet Paleoweb.org est de collecter des sites Web pour exposer aux générations futures l'état de l'art de l'utilisation du site Web, à partir du début des temps d'Internet.

Das Ziel des Projekts ist eine Websites Sammlung zu gründen. So können die kommenden Generationen den Stand der Kunst der Websites aus den frühen Zeiten des Internets zugehen.

See Ghostsites for such an other initiative.

What is Paleoweb.org?

Paleoweb.org is a project aimed at collecting representative websites for the future generations to be able to navigate the early web. Paleo stands for old in Greek.

Why should I let my old website enter into the Paleoweb.org project instead of simply let my domain expire and my website vanish from the Internet?

The response stands in 3 words: avoid domain parking. If you don't want to renew your domain, your domain won't be likely to vanish because there will be a so called domainer to catch it, and try to make money by setting up a parking page behind the domain. The Websites linking to your old website will drive visitors waiting to find your website, landing now to a very deceptive parking page.

What is the problem with parking pages?

Visit the StopDomainParking.org website to understand why parking pages severely offense the Internet ecosystem

I completely lost my website (for example due to a disk crash). Is it an issue to enter the paleoweb project?

No. we have the technology to rebuild a frozen version of the website from different cache sources.

What is the difference between Archive.org and Paleoweb.org?

The project Archive.org keeps time snapshots from a very large number of websites. Thus, if you developed several versions of your website, the archive can take you back to an older version. But the key point is that they consider that the domain holder is somehow the owner of content, or at least can decide whether or not the older versions are visible or hidden on the Archive.org website (through the Robots.txt configuration). Domainers, with their parking page will most probably block the older versions, because they don't care about others work. The second difference is that even in the good case, (1) the older website from the archive.org won't be anymore indexed by the search engine, and (2) the external links from other websites to the old website will all be broken. Thus, in the best case, the website will only be visible to those who know this website to previously exist, and are savvy enough to go to Archive.org. This is not a weakness of the Archive.org but an approach the traditionnal model of an archive.

What kinds of websites are eligible to this museum?

Any website that has been popular for a good reason and that its author doesn't want to handle longer, possibly whether because the website doesn't meet people today's needs, or is more or less deprecated, or abandoned.

How popular should the website be?

We focus on websites with at least a moderate popularity. With a thumb, the website could have links from about 50+ other websites. Some good natural links is better than numerous links, and is the best metric to estimate a website, through the interest of others for it.

My website earns some money. Is it a good point?

For you, sure! You should then either keep your website or sell it through a marketplace to a new owner willing to develop it further. We are interested in websites that are in deprecated state and having no significant income or none at all. The limit of an income that is considered as non significant is approximatively the recurring costs (domain name, hosting).

What will happen with my website if it enters the Paleoweb.org project?

1. Your website will be hosted in a frozen version, in other words the visitors will be able to navigate the existing content, but any action willing to modify the data of the website (such as adding a comment if the website was a blog) will be desactivated. The visitors will be clearly notified of the state of the website to avoid any deceptive experience. Any ad of any kind will be removed if any.

2. Your website will be linked from the Paleoweb.org from a dedicated page, with informative content about the history of the website and its author.

These pages from paleoweb.org with their related websites constitute the museum of Paleoweb.org.

I accidentally lost my domain and found it on the Paleoweb.org website. Can I get it back?

Paleoweb.org has a the greatest respect for other's work and will therefore give the ownership back to the previous owner, without a dime of profit. We will just check your identity and ask to recover only what we paid to buy the domain. In this case, a short testimonial on the Paleoweb.org website and/or a link to Paleoweb.org is much appreciated.

I want my old website enters your museum. How do we proceed?

First, you have to choose between a standard sale or an escrow for the domain with revenue sharing, the latter case being preferred for larger websites. Request for more information by dropping us an email (see top of page).

How is Paleoweb.org funded?

Paleoweb.org is a privately funded project. To generate sufficient income to enable this project to grow, we implemented an original and non intrusive way that is very similar to classical museum: get visitors to discover the art collection, and monetize them. To this aim, we add to each website a long tail mashup showing web2.0 resources in same topic.

Visitors, who want either support the museum or discourage domain parking, might consider to link Paleoweb.org with the text button:

Copy and paste the following xhtml code:

<style>
 .plw_sl {
  margin: 1em 0;
  width: 9.5em;
  border: 1px solid #ccc;
  font-family: helvetica,arial,sans-serif;
  font-size: 70%;
  font-weight: bold;
}
.plw_sl a {
  display: block;
  width: 100%;
}
.plw_sl a:link,
.plw_sl a:visited,
.plw_sl a:hover {
  background-color: #fc6;
  color: #000;
  text-decoration: none;
}
.plw_sl span.w3c {
  padding: 0 0.4em;
  background-color: #fff;
  color: #0c479d;
}
</style>
<div class="plw_sl">
  <a href="http://www.paleoweb.org">
    <span class="w3c">PALEOWEB</span>
    <span class="spec">ORG</span>
  </a>
</div>