The Internet Archive today is launching a free service to help webmasters improve their user experience by augmenting their website’s 404 Page Not Found page to link to the Wayback Machine in the case that it has it. Therefore users trying to get to any pages that might have been on a previous version of your website will now be given the option to go to the Wayback Machine.
To embed a link to the Wayback Machine on your site’s 404 pages, just include this line in your error page:
<div id="wb404"/> <script src="https://archive.org/web/wb404.js"> </script>
If an archived page is not found, then nothing will appear, if it is found, then your user will see:
For instance, the Internet Archive has installed this on its 404 error handling page. We had a page, before 2004, that is still referenced on the web. Now, instead of people getting a 404: File Not Found error, they get a page that includes a link to the page in the Wayback Machine.
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I tried the link you provided but immediately upon trying my virus checker warns me of suspicious activity.
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It’s important that website owners don’t use this as an excuse not to handle moved pages properly. If a page has moved location, a 301 redirect should be set up so that old links continue to function transparently.
Hello,
I had a stroke in 2003 and lost my website, http://louis3004212.nstemp.net/.
I am now trying to get all the stories I had written and the stories that are longer than 2 pages come up with the 404 message. Are these lost forever? Please help. I had someone build the website for me when I had started it and lost their contact info.
I just want my stories back.
Thank you.
Kristine
@Kristine I’m afraid they don’t appear to be in any public web archive, e.g. louis3004212.nstemp.net/stories/real/real_3.html. Sorry.