Internet Archive's Wayback Machine

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What is the Wayback Machine?

The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine [web.archive.org] is a website that archives old versions of websites and webpages across the Internet. It's one of the web's greatest treasures. With it, you can (sometimes) access a website after it's become defunct, access webpages that are no longer available, or even view information that was removed or modified when webpages were edited, websites changed owners, or were redesigned.

To use it, all you need to do is paste a URL and it will show you the latest archived version of the webpage. If that isn't the version you want, you can access easily access an older version until you find something that actually loads.

Unfortunately, the archive can't really archive everything. Older webpages were easier to archive because they were static. Some webpages may not load properly if they were created using complex technologies. That said, it's still a wonderful resource that lets you access many small websites created any time from the year 2000 to today. Such websites often have short lives, as their owners stop maintaining them after a while, but they're kept immortal thanks to the Wayback Machine, accessible for all future generations to see (so long as the machine survives).

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