All You Need To Know About In-House Web Archiving

All finance service companies know that it is important to archive its website (as stated by FINRA), but they also know that this can be done by the IT department. Archiving your company’s web pages yourself, instead of getting it archived by professionals can give it a DIY effect and the results can sometimes be devastating.

Web archiving for proving your compliance is already a tough job and unless your web page is really simple, that is without any dynamic features or chatbots which is highly unlikely, it’s going to be all the more difficult. Apart from that, you also need to archive your social media communications, which is a whole new level of complexity due to its constantly changing nature.

If you still feel that you can archive your website yourself, then here are some In-House web archiving methods that countless companies have tried (and failed).

Custom Web Archiving

All big organizations usually employ their IT department for web archiving. By doing this they think that they have saved a lot of resources. But, because of their less experience, they don’t realize that web archiving is really hard. Trying to save a few bucks they usually end up spending more after they understand that they need to fix their disaster.

Now imagine this: you have drained all your resources, time and human power to create a custom-built solution, and one fine day it stops working. Will you be able to deal with the loss?

Irrespective of the timeline, the loss of archives can be really troublesome. They will then require additional human resources to regularly check for mistakes and fix them.

On the contrary, working with an expert will save you all this time and effort and also ensure that your system is fast and efficient. Your archives must capture everything on your web page at the given frequency – and this is one of the first things that fail in an In-house web archiving solution.

Content Management System (CMS)

To run your website, you are already paying for the Content Management System and they also provide this additional function that enables you to restore your website in times of need. This means you can demand a complete website restoration at any point in time, to the website you had at any other time. Magic, isn’t it?

You must be thinking, you are already paying for a CMS and you can enable your web archiving without any additional costs. But, wait. There are a few limitations to this method: The first problem comes with the passage of time. If at some point in your business, you want to change your CMS providers, then to retain your conversations and have access to the older versions of your website you need to keep paying them. This no-cost solution will then become very expensive.

Even if you are satisfied with your CMS provider and have no intention to change it in the future, you still need to rely on your CMS to restore your website. This method doesn’t let you supervise your online communications. Also, the restored website won’t have all the interactive and dynamic content. Hence, what you actually need is a web archive and not a restored website.

External Website Backups

Using your external website backups developed by your own IT department will also not work as an acceptable archive. This method is not capable of recording essential third-party conversations. Along with it, it fails to retain the linked pages. This means you cannot prove that the page was truthful at the time you created the external link.
Plus, it may also happen that the backup doesn’t work properly after a long period of time. It may not operate due to changed versions and technology. This approach is not efficient enough to qualify as evidence in the court of law.

Static Capturing

Some companies do not understand the need for archiving and go for crude methods like screenshots and pdf files. While being relatively cheap, this method carries a high compliance risk.

Pdfs and screenshots do not capture any dynamic content or external links. They miss out on all third-party conversations as well. They are not reliable as they can be easily modified and hence this is an absolutely inefficient method.

Try Using Stillio for Web Archiving

Stillio can capture everything on your website through full-size PNG screenshots at regular intervals of time. It even captures all website ads and video stills. The archiving process can be scheduled as per your requirement- hourly, daily or weekly.

Using Stillio can make this complex process of web archiving really simple for you as the process is fully automated and you need not worry about its efficiency.

Also Read: 7 easy tricks to make your online business a huge success