If you're wishing your writings to be read by your children, why not print them on paper — and so in duplicate amounts kept in different places — that they will eventually find?
I think, in your case, it would be easier to keep physical copies of those texts than try to keep a digital version of them up for a hundred years. And far less expensive.
Also, you'd be leaving them a more precious thing. I'd be far more excited discovering papers that my father/mother wrote and left for me than, say, seeing them on the internet.
I suggest you start converting your writing into short digestible Tiktok dance moves...
Joking aside, paper is resilient. Share your digital writings everywhere, then make paper copies that you can donate to libraries. If this fails, that's fine. You won't be around to see it.
You've made my day. On the other hand it's quite bold to say that Tiktok dances will last 100 years. The videos there are 30-40 seconds long matching viewers attention span, so using simple math we can extrapolate that in 100 years they will last 0.03ns at max
To put it as simply as possible. Try to stick to plain text as much as possible. Of course, let something like an SSG (Static Site Generator) handle the HTML conversion. Before you die, set/ask someone or an entity to host the HTML on a server that can host HTML (should be in 100+ years too).
As for the domain, keep renewing it a few years ahead whenever you remember. I’m sure there are registrars where you can add credit, and it auto-renews.
Personally (and I’m not sure and haven’t even started), I really liked owning and helping others own their digital assets online. So, I have been meaning to, or would really like to, start an Internet Business (registrar, hosting, email, forms, etc.). Thus, an entity that can live on after me, that does business while owning the current Internet Assets that I own now.
I suggest saving the files as text/markdown and sending them to your children as an email zip file. You could also print a book and give copies to your children and grandchildren.
“Only wimps use tape backup. REAL men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.”
- Linus Torvalds
When we go, our children will throw almost everything away. And this is ok.
Information regularly moves storage devices or dies. If your work is not already published / disseminated by the public then it will disappear.
Do multiple or all of the things mentioned in the other comments for redundancy, then set up a Delaware non-charitable purpose trust with a reasonably large endowment. Make sure your lawyers plan the trust carefully with reliable enforcement and position it to be well defended against "capriciousness"[0] claims.
The proper way to do it is how it was done always. Teach your kids. If they grow up and your teachings stand the test of time, they will pass it to their kids, and so on...
Encode your data as qr codes and etch them onto diamonds. Your data lasts virtually forever in the form of family heirlooms.
Using modern femtosecond lasers, you can etch codes as small as 250 to 500 microns.
Total Capacity (5 Diamonds): 180 QR codes (36 per diamond) = 230 KB of data.
Arweave network is like Bitcoin, but for data: A permanent and decentralized web inside an open ledger. [0]
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a decentralized protocol, hypermedia, and peer-to-peer (P2P) network for distributed file storage and sharing. The shadow libraries Anna's Archive and Library Genesis host books via IPFS. [1]
Putting static copies on Github Pages, Cloudflare Pages, and the Internet Archive would make pretty good odds it's preserved. The only real way to make sure would be to set up and fund some sort of trust to basically hire someone to run it after you're gone.
For high reliability, I think I would suggest engraving it into a low reactivity nonvaluable metal, perhaps titanium sheet would be a good choice. Couple that with a backup on printed archival paper using carbon toner or an art-grade ink or dye. Between the two of them they will probably resist damage for 100 years or so.
Brass or bronze would also be a decent option, but you'd have to make the text larger for it to be readable with corrosion. Perhaps braille would be an interesting choice there.
And ceramics are a great choice - clay tablets, when fired, can last millenia.
I think between the three of a metal sheet, clay tablet, and paper book, one of the three is almost certain to survive a century.
If you had the same goal ~25 years ago what would you have done? Are those top options still around or bankrupt, have their prices and services changed dramatically?
The best way to preserve something is not with technology or any particular storage medium.
The only way to ensure something is preserved is for there to be living humans who care about the thing enough to put forth the effort to preserve it.
Information that is stored in very fragile old formats is well preserved because there are living humans who are putting forth the effort. Information that nobody cares about, but is stored very securely, will be culled eventually as even libraries and archives have limited capacity.
If you want your personal website to be preserved, the best thing you can do is make it so good that your children, or someone else, cares about it enough to keep it.
write it to a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC or something similar and put it somewhere safe, like a bank, with a reader. why do you need to host it if it is for your kids? maybe a real answer is to pay someone or make some elaborate rube goldberg redundancy apparatus on some p2p mesh network or whatever.
Very correct. Hell, OP is even thinking way too far out of scope for the goal on the request itself. They are thinking of their own progeny. The website doesn't need to survive 100 years, that implies knowledge of the site existing survived their death too. Only a method of seeing it, and reminding their children of it are needed, which honestly only requires the same attitude as keeping a an album of picture around.
OP could just get a box with a Raspberry Pi 5, its power chord, a mini mouse, and a built in mini screen. Seal it all off so nothing inside shakes. Congrats, you got your very own digital version of a personal memoir. The only thing now stopping this from working is The International Electrotechnical Commission somehow doing in the next 100 years what they couldn't the previous 120.
The screen can either, screw it, show the content directly, or MAYBE some indication of what a SSH connection is so the people accessing it have a way to figure it out. It's fine, the hyperfuture AI will do it for them.
Every 5 years, OP opens the box, and put in a new SD card with updated content, labels the previous one, and closes the box. Or, I dunno, swaps out the device for something else newer, if the IEC ninjas did come for him and forced everyone to use Wario Logo shaped plugs.
1. Defend against format obsolescence. Prefer plain-text formats, or at least ones that can be mostly-understood by humans, like markdown or semantic XML. (And not, say, PDFs.) For audio-visual stuff, prefer the simplest kinds of highly standardized and common formats.
2. If you need a website, prefer a static site generator. If you need a dynamic site, periodically export a static version.
3. Don't count entirely on the hosting service, store offline copies (as a standard zip file) alongside other content of interest to heirs, such as a will. Distribute redundant copies to relatives.
1. What's wrong with PDF? The format has been around for 30+ years now, and PDFs that old display just fine on any open-source PDF-viewing program now.
3. Redundant copies aren't going to last 100 years unless they're on some medium that can actually last that long, such as an aluminum (i.e., factory-made, not burned) CD. A flash thumb drive isn't going to last that long, not even close.
They'll be loads of unexpected things that come up that can't be anticipated.
Just look at some of the websites that were abandoned in the early 2000-2010s but which are still actively hosted today but that are broken now due to modern browsers refusing to load cross-origin resources, or the server's ciphers are no longer accepted etc. They're still online, you just can't see the content with today's computers. You need a human (...or potentially an AI?) there to intervene and resolve those problems to keep it going.
Sure you might say well my writings are not using HTTPS or I don't make cross-origin requests, but that totally misses the point. Who knows in 50 years you may not even be able to read ASCII text in consumer browsers any more without specialist archival/library tools, just like we can't use what we're at the time totally legitimate SSL ciphers.
I think that archiving your writings is different from having your site active and casually available.
Simpler is better. Ideally, it should be a static site, and hostable on any domain.
Failing that, choose technologies that have been around for a while. PHP, Ruby, and Java have been around for 20+ years, and are still going strong. There is no hope that anything touching Node or npm will run in a year.
Write a book, send a copy to the Internet Archive, upload the digital version. Leave your kids the ISBN or Archive.org item identifier. Donate $2/GB uploaded if you can afford it.
You could also have the Internet Archive crawl your site to preserve it if the above is too much trouble, with it being accessible through Wayback.
If you're wishing your writings to be read by your children, why not print them on paper — and so in duplicate amounts kept in different places — that they will eventually find?
I think, in your case, it would be easier to keep physical copies of those texts than try to keep a digital version of them up for a hundred years. And far less expensive.
Also, you'd be leaving them a more precious thing. I'd be far more excited discovering papers that my father/mother wrote and left for me than, say, seeing them on the internet.
If you are into super villainy, invest in a giant laser to etch your website onto the moon.
Create your own Voyager probe with a golden disk. If you can orient it to avoid any collisions, could survive to the end of the universe.
I suggest you start converting your writing into short digestible Tiktok dance moves...
Joking aside, paper is resilient. Share your digital writings everywhere, then make paper copies that you can donate to libraries. If this fails, that's fine. You won't be around to see it.
You've made my day. On the other hand it's quite bold to say that Tiktok dances will last 100 years. The videos there are 30-40 seconds long matching viewers attention span, so using simple math we can extrapolate that in 100 years they will last 0.03ns at max
Yes and… may i suggest turning the website into a religion… then it may last several thousand years
To put it as simply as possible. Try to stick to plain text as much as possible. Of course, let something like an SSG (Static Site Generator) handle the HTML conversion. Before you die, set/ask someone or an entity to host the HTML on a server that can host HTML (should be in 100+ years too).
As for the domain, keep renewing it a few years ahead whenever you remember. I’m sure there are registrars where you can add credit, and it auto-renews.
Personally (and I’m not sure and haven’t even started), I really liked owning and helping others own their digital assets online. So, I have been meaning to, or would really like to, start an Internet Business (registrar, hosting, email, forms, etc.). Thus, an entity that can live on after me, that does business while owning the current Internet Assets that I own now.
See https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1017715/Humanity-s-Last-Game-T... from 1hr and 17 second mark for ideas on how to make something survive.
honestly though, no one know how to make your "website" exist for 100years. Websites have only existed for ~35 years.
Mine is about to hit 25-years. 35-years definitely looks promising and doable.
Are books not websites in a way.. easy to print the articles and have it printed as a book.
I suggest saving the files as text/markdown and sending them to your children as an email zip file. You could also print a book and give copies to your children and grandchildren.
“Only wimps use tape backup. REAL men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.” - Linus Torvalds
When we go, our children will throw almost everything away. And this is ok.
Information regularly moves storage devices or dies. If your work is not already published / disseminated by the public then it will disappear.
And this is ok.
Do multiple or all of the things mentioned in the other comments for redundancy, then set up a Delaware non-charitable purpose trust with a reasonably large endowment. Make sure your lawyers plan the trust carefully with reliable enforcement and position it to be well defended against "capriciousness"[0] claims.
0: https://lawprof.co/flashcard/what-is-capriciousness
The proper way to do it is how it was done always. Teach your kids. If they grow up and your teachings stand the test of time, they will pass it to their kids, and so on...
Wordpress.com offers 100-year plans. Hosting + domain is $38,000 or domain only is $2,000.
https://wordpress.com/100-year/
This only works if the company does not collapse or suddenly decide to change the conditions... And Wordpress's CEO is Matt Mullenweg...
This is insane. That company isn't going to be around in 100 years.
Encode your data as qr codes and etch them onto diamonds. Your data lasts virtually forever in the form of family heirlooms.
Using modern femtosecond lasers, you can etch codes as small as 250 to 500 microns. Total Capacity (5 Diamonds): 180 QR codes (36 per diamond) = 230 KB of data.
https://sdf.lonestar.org has been around since 1987. They have a one-time lifetime membership fee of $36.
I feel like I would trust them more than probably anyone else for hosting a static website for a 100 years.
RE How to make my website exist for 100 years?
Get it archived in Wayback machine and other web archive sites ....
This is of course assuming that Internet Archive will still exist in 100 years.
And that Internet will still exist in 100 years
And that anything will still exist in 100 years
And that anyone will be there to observe whether anything still exists in 100 years
metal disks with bumps have lasted for over 200 years.
do that.
Stones with calendars carved into them have lasted for over 6000 years.
do that.
Obviously the only pragmatic solution is to enslave a whole continent and force them to create a pyramid with edifices of your likeness.
while that happens simply chase the moon to ensure the day.
You might be interested in Arweave or IPFS:
Arweave network is like Bitcoin, but for data: A permanent and decentralized web inside an open ledger. [0]
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a decentralized protocol, hypermedia, and peer-to-peer (P2P) network for distributed file storage and sharing. The shadow libraries Anna's Archive and Library Genesis host books via IPFS. [1]
[0] https://www.arweave.org/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
If I remember correctly IPFS alone won't guarantee that the file will be around.
You have to pay some service to keep it pinned. Also cross your fingers and hope IPFS is still a thing in 100 years.
The good thing is, with AI scraping everything today, it will be incorporated into the AI - so your content will continue to exist in the weights.
In that way, your thoughts will live on ...
Putting static copies on Github Pages, Cloudflare Pages, and the Internet Archive would make pretty good odds it's preserved. The only real way to make sure would be to set up and fund some sort of trust to basically hire someone to run it after you're gone.
If you put it on Bitcoin blockchain it will probably outlast the internet.
20 years - google doc with backups in your email and wherever your taxes and medical stuff is, and printed copy with your home records
40 years - print and bind the google doc in 20 years, store it with their stuff when they leave the house.
60 years - publish the book buy a bunch of copies and distribute
100 years - it needs to be a very good book
Individual books can last much longer than a hundred years.
Worst case, engrave it on a clay tablet and bury it in a bog.
For high reliability, I think I would suggest engraving it into a low reactivity nonvaluable metal, perhaps titanium sheet would be a good choice. Couple that with a backup on printed archival paper using carbon toner or an art-grade ink or dye. Between the two of them they will probably resist damage for 100 years or so.
Brass or bronze would also be a decent option, but you'd have to make the text larger for it to be readable with corrosion. Perhaps braille would be an interesting choice there.
And ceramics are a great choice - clay tablets, when fired, can last millenia.
I think between the three of a metal sheet, clay tablet, and paper book, one of the three is almost certain to survive a century.
If you had the same goal ~25 years ago what would you have done? Are those top options still around or bankrupt, have their prices and services changed dramatically?
If I start ~25 year ago, I would have used some "Kodak Gold CD-R" disk.
According to charts at those time, average CD-R can last 30-50 years and these 24K Gold CD-R are designed to last 100-300 years.
(mine are failing after ~20 years)
The best way to preserve something is not with technology or any particular storage medium.
The only way to ensure something is preserved is for there to be living humans who care about the thing enough to put forth the effort to preserve it.
Information that is stored in very fragile old formats is well preserved because there are living humans who are putting forth the effort. Information that nobody cares about, but is stored very securely, will be culled eventually as even libraries and archives have limited capacity.
If you want your personal website to be preserved, the best thing you can do is make it so good that your children, or someone else, cares about it enough to keep it.
write it to a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC or something similar and put it somewhere safe, like a bank, with a reader. why do you need to host it if it is for your kids? maybe a real answer is to pay someone or make some elaborate rube goldberg redundancy apparatus on some p2p mesh network or whatever.
So funny to See sone Folks Talking about the tech Stack when Hosting is the only Problem to solve
Very correct. Hell, OP is even thinking way too far out of scope for the goal on the request itself. They are thinking of their own progeny. The website doesn't need to survive 100 years, that implies knowledge of the site existing survived their death too. Only a method of seeing it, and reminding their children of it are needed, which honestly only requires the same attitude as keeping a an album of picture around.
OP could just get a box with a Raspberry Pi 5, its power chord, a mini mouse, and a built in mini screen. Seal it all off so nothing inside shakes. Congrats, you got your very own digital version of a personal memoir. The only thing now stopping this from working is The International Electrotechnical Commission somehow doing in the next 100 years what they couldn't the previous 120.
The screen can either, screw it, show the content directly, or MAYBE some indication of what a SSH connection is so the people accessing it have a way to figure it out. It's fine, the hyperfuture AI will do it for them.
Every 5 years, OP opens the box, and put in a new SD card with updated content, labels the previous one, and closes the box. Or, I dunno, swaps out the device for something else newer, if the IEC ninjas did come for him and forced everyone to use Wario Logo shaped plugs.
Is it a solvable problem though?
1. Defend against format obsolescence. Prefer plain-text formats, or at least ones that can be mostly-understood by humans, like markdown or semantic XML. (And not, say, PDFs.) For audio-visual stuff, prefer the simplest kinds of highly standardized and common formats.
2. If you need a website, prefer a static site generator. If you need a dynamic site, periodically export a static version.
3. Don't count entirely on the hosting service, store offline copies (as a standard zip file) alongside other content of interest to heirs, such as a will. Distribute redundant copies to relatives.
1. What's wrong with PDF? The format has been around for 30+ years now, and PDFs that old display just fine on any open-source PDF-viewing program now.
3. Redundant copies aren't going to last 100 years unless they're on some medium that can actually last that long, such as an aluminum (i.e., factory-made, not burned) CD. A flash thumb drive isn't going to last that long, not even close.
Pay someone.
Seriously.
They'll be loads of unexpected things that come up that can't be anticipated.
Just look at some of the websites that were abandoned in the early 2000-2010s but which are still actively hosted today but that are broken now due to modern browsers refusing to load cross-origin resources, or the server's ciphers are no longer accepted etc. They're still online, you just can't see the content with today's computers. You need a human (...or potentially an AI?) there to intervene and resolve those problems to keep it going.
Sure you might say well my writings are not using HTTPS or I don't make cross-origin requests, but that totally misses the point. Who knows in 50 years you may not even be able to read ASCII text in consumer browsers any more without specialist archival/library tools, just like we can't use what we're at the time totally legitimate SSL ciphers.
I think that archiving your writings is different from having your site active and casually available.
Solve this and you probably have a business. :)
Have a bunch of kids and grandkids and raise them to honor your wishes. That's the only way.
Simpler is better. Ideally, it should be a static site, and hostable on any domain.
Failing that, choose technologies that have been around for a while. PHP, Ruby, and Java have been around for 20+ years, and are still going strong. There is no hope that anything touching Node or npm will run in a year.
Write a book, send a copy to the Internet Archive, upload the digital version. Leave your kids the ISBN or Archive.org item identifier. Donate $2/GB uploaded if you can afford it.
You could also have the Internet Archive crawl your site to preserve it if the above is too much trouble, with it being accessible through Wayback.
https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...
https://help.archive.org/help/uploading-a-basic-guide/
https://hackernoon.com/the-long-now-of-the-web-inside-the-in...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611593