I love the idea of websites as time capsules for people in the future to find and learn about us one day. But to do that, the data must survive. This means not using external resources for your site and keeping things simple, but where to put it?
Is decentralized hosting a thing to consider? Some kind of open p2p network that can survive into the future?
If you haven’t read it, you might find this similar topic interesting:
There are the usual ways, like archive.org, archive.is, and others. You could create your own mirrors on free or paid servers, and there is decentralized hosting like the Interplanetary Filesystem. But you could also get a bit creative with it. One of my backups is just a USB stick that I download everything to periodically, so that it’s airgapped. What if you pulled everything onto a USB stick and left it somewhere public? If your website fits on a CD/DVD, you could do that too.
What about saving everything into PDF format and treating it like a book? Or binding it into an actual book and keeping it on the shelf for the future? You could turn it into a comic book, or put it into a torrent, hide it in a JPEG using steganography, or create a scavenger hunt that leads to a zip file on a server somewhere.
I’m spitballing here, so I’m sure these ideas aren’t super practical, but I kind of like the idea of stumbling across a person’s life work in the form of a website hidden somewhere innocuous. I also like puzzles, so I’m probably more inclined to make it more complex than it needs to be.
Thanks, I just finished reading this thread. It’s thought provoking, and great to hear everyone’s ideas, but I’d like to focus on a solution.
I’m not terribly concerned with the philosophy here, I’m just a birb after all 
. For me, this is all about posterity and ephemera.
My aunt is an ephemera enthusiast and is always sifting through old records, tapes. notebooks, etc to learn about forgotten people and times. She’s developing into a historian, whether she realizes it or not!
I think, as a culture, it’s in our future generations’ interest to solve the problem of digital decay. Not for my sake, I’ll be ded.
I do like these simple ideas of simply keeping hard copies of data around. But, realistically, we don’t always know how long these will last either (or remain accessible).
I don’t understand how the Interplanetary Filesystem (
INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY - PLANETARY INTER-GA-LAC-TIC ) really works yet, I need to read more about it. But Peer-2-Peer hosting DOES seem to be the best solution.
Enough personal machines hosting redundant decentralized data should be one of the most future-ready hosting structure we can make right now.
Perhaps that dove- 
-tails with a decentralized protocol to eliminate the need for paid domains?
Some paid hosting services let you deposit money ahead of time. That could last a very long time at pennies each month if it weren’t for the domain name. Domain name pricing seems unfortunately variable.
FYI, some hostings will give a free name like <username>.hosting.website. And this will last for as long as the host itself does.
My mom is the same way (and so am I, slowly over time lol). I keep backups upon backups of my website, but honestly I don’t trust any of those services that promise hosting for X years at a time… it just feels like those sorts of businesses are too ephemeral to promise me that lol. Archival sites like mentioned previously might be the most surefire way to go, but yeah p2p might be a great jumping off point if you don’t want to rely on that. Either way it’s definitely something to think about as we go into the future!
you could pay for a subscription somewhere for the rest of your life and as long as that service stays active you’re good! (or you can move files to the next host if that one doesn’t stay active.) this is the most reliable way I’ve found to keep data online long term.
there’s unfortunately no way to guarantee your data remains where you put it. the idea that “everything stays online forever” is a lie. even with a paid service, there’s always a possibility of data loss. so instead of looking for a guarantee, go with what seems the best effort solution for your project, and keep backups so if something happens, you can reupload it somewhere else later if you’d like to.
fwiw I use the internet archive for the purpose you’re outlining. I browse old sites all the time to capture a hint of what things were like back then and experience the early digital world.