in: Website Design
by: Katie Hellmuth Martin
When Daily Candy closed, a very smart stylist and member of Tin Shingle, Dawn Del Russo pointed out on our blog post strategizing Daily Candy's closing, that when a website dies, any press links she had to Daily Candy proving her press coverage would be gone. Which means that the visual page layouts would also be gone. Dawn reminded us to get screenshots of all press on a website when she commented this:
| "It also made me realize how important it is to screen shot all press and not simply rely on a link back to it. This way it is forever archived on a hard drive and not simply as a link via a website." |
In fact, a link to Daily Candy's goodbye letter on their website might actually not work in the near future.
When dealing with websites and anything digital, you must know that nothing lasts forever. Clouds blow away. Data disappears. So you need proof of your press saved onto your hard drive, server, CD, etc., however paranoid you want to get.
BACKUP SCREENSHOTS
You need backup screenshots of all press, and anything that is sourced from another website. That includes Twitter tweets that you may have "embedded" onto your website. Embedding a tweet is very easy to do, but if Twitter ever changes their code, your embedded tweet won't display anymore. This is especially important for websites like ours that use Tweetmonials, and display the appreciative comments we receive from people. If you are in a jam, you could try the WayBackMachine, which is an Internet archive of the web, which may have some screenshots available.
SAVE YOUR OWN VIDEO FILES
Daily Candy featured some businesses on videos that Daily Candy produced. Many companies including American Express also feature business by using videos. Those videos may offer "embed codes" that you can use to play the video on your site very easily. However, if that websites does dark, then your video will disappear. When you get video press from another website, get their permission right away to have the file and post it to your website. If the press was on TV, consider buying the file from a video library like 360 Media Watch or BurrellesLuce. Sabina Hitchen, my partner at Tin Shingle agrees: "Oh definately ALWAYS buy them. The website clips nearly always disappear or get
moved and then you have dead links on your website and in places like your Pintesrt!" So don't wait until the last minute, like when the website is going out of business, to email someone for a file. Eeeps!
