patndoris TechnoGeek

If you’re like me, you think of the internet as more or less immortal. It’s this great invisible being (like the supercomputer Deep Thought in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that churns on thinking for 7-1/2 million years) that exist forever, and it’s content will never be lost. Ah, but how far from the truth it is. Sure we have sites like Wayback Machine (which I rarely have luck with due to robots.txt files blocking the request) but what do you do when a site you depend on to be there is just suddenly POOF! Gulp! And double GULP! GONE?

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Just over a week ago, I spent a evening copying the source code from pages on a site I dearly loved to browse around. I’ve culled more than a few helpful hints from the site. I was just going to toss the code in my HTML editor for reference. After about 1/2 hour I decided, nah - why bother - it will be there if I need it. As I blindly deleted the files, how could I have known? Nothing could have been farther from the truth! Last night, I went in search of a HTML trick…or was it CSS?…in the midst of all my panic last night I’ve forgotten just why I went to the site in the first place. Bottom line - it was gone.

BTW is that a nifty little tombstone generator I found or WHAT?!

After a bit of searching, I found that Meg, who blogged and kept Mandarin Design’s site alive for years, passed away earlier this year. Apparently, her family has decided not to renew her domain. Her works will be lost. She had a gift for making CSS and HTML tricks simple. Copy and paste. Your text goes here. How much better could it have been? Her pages were wonderful resources - a wealth of information. It seems her devoted followers even offered to pay for the hosting of her site so it could continue, but for whatever reasons it does not appear that will happen. The domain expired December 4th.

My own attempts (for the big boss) at securing a previously owned domain name tell me the name will remain tied up in internet space for about 60 days. You get a grace period to renew after expiration (kind of like a reanimation period where you can miraculously come back from the dead) then the registrar can charge you extra to let you renew after the grace period (…like cryogenics - frozen for some time but perhaps still able to be thawed out). If you don’t spontaneously regenerate by then, at some unspecified hour on some not exact date, the domain is released from it’s hosting server into the big bad void of domain names where many evil predators (commonly known as sites where you bid for a name and pay an inflated price to get it) sit clicking as often as they can without being denied service, trying to fetch a name capable of commanding a high price for someone else’s (in this case) moment of fame. Barring that - the name floats happily off into oblivion - the black hole of domain names - until someone decides to reincarnate it as some other website. The original site content however, is likely lost like ancient scrolls, forgotten and undiscovered - unless you manage to contact the current owner and procure some sort of deal.

The nasty thing about Mandarin Design’s recent demise is the Network Solutions coffin (…I mean page) that slams down over the content so quickly, just as you see content begin to load, the lid closes. Blam! The viewing is over before it even began and the nasty “domain’s expired” page is looming in front of you, like an undertaker shooing you away from the funeral home. Several of the pages for Mandarin Design can still be accessed via cache on Google (as anticipated Wayback Machine did not work - at least it’s consistent for me) but even then - the best of the pages (probably the most visited) face the same fate of being blocked from loving eyes. I suppose they figure if you’re determined to look at the smaller pages one by one, then so be it, but the valuable ones where all the smaller tips were carefully indexed and combined - well, we’re not going to make it easy for you!

Hah! I found a way around it! ROFL eyes a twinkling!! For most of what I absolutely had to grab last night before it fades off into eternal oblivion - after several browsers, multiple repeated cached attempts (always with same fruitless results) I had an idea. Yes, I had an idea, I do get them from time to time. I used Chrome, which conveniently uses Ctrl+U to display page source. If you can manage to synchronize the rapid depression of both keys just mere nanoseconds after submitting the page request, you can grab the source code before the nasty Network Solutions page manages to load. It’s a dream come true. I managed to grab the code for about a dozen of the main pages with the best reference material. Sure, I will have to comb through the masses of html (one page was over 7000…yes that’s a 7 followed by 3, count ‘em 1…2….3….zero’s) lines long. But I have those valuable tips I want. No, I won’t be posting them anywhere. If her family doesn’t want her legacy to live on, it’s not my place to reincarnate her information on the web. They’ll live happily and quietly in my HTML editor - for reference purposes. Although, they were created under Creative Commons, and she did have some kind of very nice note about using it to learn from, but I don’t think I’ll risk posting the content. Though nothing says I can’t use it to create lovely images, banners, text tricks and CSS creations on my website and blog - and then you, my dear friends and reader’s, copy my source code…..

So, what’s the point of this entry? Nothing really. Just to take a moment to reflect, to remember that sites you count on today, may not be there tomorrow. Should that send you off in search of the domain information so you can mark the possible date of death on your calendar?….So you can start saving source code early?….Before it’s too late? No, I really don’t think that’s necessary. Though it is interesting in an almost psychotic (oops…I mean psychic) way how I was doing just that before it expired, not even realizing what was to come. I should have trusted my OCD instincts a little more. And what’s worse is I could have had ALL the content copied by now if I’d continued on with what I deemed a highly OCD activity I forced myself to discontinue so I wouldn’t become obsessed by it. You can always use a trick or two if need be to grab a few pages just after death. Grabbing the code in those uncertain days after expiration is sort of like mini-CPR where you breathe just enough life into it to get what you need out of it. And if you’ve not visited it in so long that it’s really gone? Shame on you - it must not have been as important as you claim it was. The internet is not immortal. Just like life, it comes and it goes. What a fickle media really, when years of work can disappear in mere seconds when the domain finally drifts into the light, off to wherever domain names go.

A final parting thought. What was Deep Thought’s “Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything"? Well, after 7-1/2 million years of churning and analyzing, it turns out to be….42