Tonight I finished up archiving Matt’s original WordPress site. It was using a really old version of WordPress and last week I discovered that Google and OpenDNS had blocked the site completely (and this one) after finding malware. It didn’t take too much effort to back up the databases, remove all of the files, upgrade the software and start new with fresh php, css, and html. I did not want to spend the time to recover the old site exactly as I had it, so I used the theme Misty Lake which is the updated version of Mistylook. Once I got everything back up I took some screenshots of the original classic WordPress theme from way back who knows when, as well as some shots of the administrative pages from WordPress 2.2, the version current to the time I set up the blog for Matt in 2007-2008. (Images to come.) Take a screenshot of a website for posterity before changing it? It’s like taking a photograph and I find myself similarly emotionally attached and thus embroiled in the art of web archiving. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any screenshots before everything went down.
These days, apps and the iPhone camera have turned old camera imperfections and mistakes into filters and effects that are considered retro. I wonder if website designs from yesteryears like Web 2.0 will at some point become retro. Not just what we record but how we record it has become food for nostalgia. I certainly found it difficult to kill the WordPress 3.5 installation on www.matthenson.com tonight. All the while knowing that it is all practice, practice to set about a project to web archive LiveMosaic if I can and to still shut it down if I can’t, practice to do it with minimal effort on my part and to be open to what that archive may or may not look like, practice to continue on.