I’m still on that 100 years thing and how it connects to free hosting, and now thanks to a conversation I peeped in on how it relates to the websites of people who have passed and the memorial sites to them.
I helped with a memorial site to Christopher Schmitt that I very much hope lasts for 100 years. It’s intentionally at a *.netlify.app URL so nobody needs to hand-manage to domain. At the time, Netlify agreed to mark the account as free. The team account has an “open source” badge when I log in now, which is likey their internal system for such things.
The code is on GitHub, but in a way that doesn’t matter as if that went away, the build/deployed files would still be there and it’s just simple HTML. Zach Leatherman mentioned during a recent Jamstack Zhuzh that “portability” might be a key aspect to the Jamstack, which I liked. Should anything become at-risk with the Netlify-hosted site, the static files could be picked up and moved elsewhere, potentially without even running the build that made them.
When Christopher passed, I know Ari Stiles had to go through quite an arduous process of getting the virtual keys to all his stuff so that his digital legacy could live on, like christopher.org, which appears to still be WordPress and thus has a bit higher of technical requirements for hosting.
The WordPress 100 year plan had this kind of thing in mind specifically:
[for:] Families who wish to preserve their digital assets—the stories, photos, sounds, and videos that make up their rich family history—for generations to come.
The zero bucks we spent on Christopher’s site was a little more on the practical side. The pine box to the gold-guilded coffin.
One regret: there’s a damn typo in the URL in the CSS-Tricks post about it but I’m locked out now and can’t fix it.
Quite the coincidence that you mentioned this. My grandpa passed away last week, and I’ve been feeling a strong urge to create a memorial for him. I’ve been trying to think through how one can make such a thing as permanent as possible.
I think the idea of going with the most-basic form of tech possible for it is a really good idea.
I’m not sure I agree with the intentional use of the Netlify domain instead of a named domain though.
Certainly a tradeoff!
What’s likely to last longer, you remembering to renew the domain in future years? And have the money to do it? And staying on top of curveballs like the company you used to register it selling or closing?
Or, a free different-company-provided subdomain that doesn’t require extra money or renewal, but is entirely tied to the existance of that company?