The Internet Archive Saves Christmas!
In this series of guest posts, our team shares a more personal take on the tools and technology we work with. In this guest post, Alexis shares a personal story that highlights the real-world impact of web archiving, starting with a family holiday tradition.
It was the day before Christmas and my family was frantically searching for a missing cinnamon roll recipe. Sorry, not a cinnamon roll recipe- THE cinnamon roll recipe.
Every year for Christmas, my mom has made the same cinnamon rolls for breakfast for our entire extended family. For 15 years, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents could expect a tray of these delicious pastries to bake the morning Kris Kringle arrives. For 15 years, she has had this page bookmarked in her phone to use every Christmas Eve. But when it was time to make them this year, the unthinkable happened - they changed the recipe on their website.
As our family desperately scoured the internet for the original recipe link, hope was quickly fading as it seemed the recipe - and our Christmas tradition - was going to be lost to time.
After two hours of frustrated searching - an idea came to mind - one born from our very own #ReclaimOpen25 and a particular conference session on Replacing a live site with a high-fidelity web archive mirror. While unlikely someone made a high-fidelity mirror of this small cooking blog in the year that the recipe has changed, as is talked about in this awesome conference session, it did give me another idea. Could the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine have saved our single recipe page from utter destruction?
In one final effort, I plugged the original link into the Wayback Machine, not expecting anything, but hoping this webpage was frozen in time by another baker long ago. And then—there it was. The original recipe, preserved exactly as my mom had used it for the past 15 years, frozen in time like a digital Christmas miracle. Within minutes, flour was measured, yeast was proofed, and a family tradition was officially saved. Thanks to the Internet Archive, Christmas morning still smelled like cinnamon, sugar, and home.
Now, as I look back on our holiday, I'm reminded again of the power in archiving. Today it’s a breakfast tradition. Tomorrow it could be research, creative work, community knowledge, an organization’s digital footprint, or entire histories. In a world where content can be changed, overwritten, or erased without warning, archiving gives us continuity. It gives us a way to remember.
If you're interested in archiving your own site, we have a great resource here: Archiving Strategies and Methods for WPMS. While this support documentation lends itself to WordPress MultiSite, the strategies suggested can work for a singular WordPress site, and some even for non-WordPress installations.
Because whether it’s a cinnamon roll recipe or something far bigger, some things are worth saving.
Alexis Block is a Customer Support Specialist at Reclaim and joined the team in 2025. When not helping customers navigate their web hosting challenges, Alexis is likely taking on some new craft project, reading, or cheering on her favorite teams with her husband at the game or on the couch. Learn more about our Reclaim team.
