Initiatives to Preserve the Content of Vanishing Web Hosting

Abstract

Free hosting services have contributed to the development of the Internet or even acted as a catalyst thereof. This paper aims to answer the questions of what free hosting services represent for Internet users and why initiatives exist to archive content published on free servers. The empirical part of this study attempts to verify whether websites on free servers were designed in an archaic way, which could justify their discontinuation. Initiatives to preserve the content of vanishing web hosting sites are characterized based on a review of various source materials, including the academic literature and Internet resources. This empirical study involved 168 archaic websites, which were analyzed in three dimensions. Marketing components and design were assessed as well. Each assessment dimension was assigned diagnostic variables. The values of the diagnostic variables were standardized using zero unitarization. It was found that the owners of discontinued servers were not interested in creating and maintaining archives. Hence, numerous grassroots initiatives have emerged to salvage their content, although enthusiasm among the archive community seems to have dwindled. Many grassroots archives are available, but a considerable number are no longer supported. In this context, this paper proposes the term ‘vanishing hosting’. It provides a nostalgic and sentimental perspective on the termination of free hosting services. The authors noted that free hosting services have largely lost their past import. It is demonstrated that free servers traditionally hosted archaic websites, which justified their deletion from a business perspective. Moreover, the paper presents an outline of a method to revitalize the tourism sector based on changes brought about by global technology to the digital ecosystem. It is proposed that changes in search engine algorithms vicariously contribute to the revitalization of the tourism sector since they often drive the replacement of old websites with newer versions (latest technology and better quality). This leads to the improved online presentation of tourism service portfolios and the general quality of the content in search engine results.