Preserving a Loved One’s Blog with the Wayback Machine: What It Saves, What It Misses, and How to Help

In the days after a death, families often discover that grief has a digital echo. A loved one’s words live on in places that feel surprisingly fragile: a personal blog, a recipe site, a project journal, a faith reflection page, a small business “About” story, a pet memorial post that strangers still comment on years later. Sometimes the site is still active and paid for. Sometimes it is already wobbling—an expired card on file, a forgotten renewal notice, a domain that will lapse without anyone realizing. And sometimes the worry is simpler and more painful: “What if it disappears?”

This is where the Wayback Machine can be a practical form of care. It is not the same as owning the website, and it is not the same as making an offline backup you control. But when you are trying to preserve a website after death and reduce the quiet damage of broken links, the Wayback Machine can help prevent link rot by capturing snapshots that are viewable later—even if the original page changes or goes offline.

If you are here because you want to archive a blog that mattered, you are not being overly sentimental. You are protecting a real part of someone’s legacy. What follows is a clear, human explanation of what the Wayback Machine can save, what it may miss, and how to pair it with an online content backup so your family is not left scrambling later.

What the Wayback Machine actually does when you “save” a page

The Wayback Machine is run by the Internet Archive. The feature most families use is called Save Page Now, which lets you capture a web page as it appears at that moment. The key detail is that it is designed to save one page at a time. According to the Internet Archive’s help documentation, Save Page Now “only saves a single page, not the whole site,” and it does not automatically crawl out to capture linked pages.

That sounds limiting, but it is also empowering, because it makes the process manageable. You are not trying to preserve “the internet.” You are trying to keep the pages that carry someone’s voice. In practice, blog preservation is often about a small set of high-value pages: the homepage, the about page, a handful of cornerstone posts, and the posts your family returns to again and again.

The Internet Archive also notes that Save Page Now generally saves the page you enter “including the images and CSS,” meaning it can preserve much of the visual layout as well as the text—but it still cannot promise a perfect capture in every case, and it will not follow and save all the outlinks for you.

What it saves well, and why that matters for families

When a blog is built in a fairly standard way—text, images embedded in the post, simple navigation—the Wayback Machine can be surprisingly effective. It is particularly helpful for preserving things that are hard to reconstruct later: a timeline of posts, a long-running series, a “start here” page, a list of links to favorite charities, or a set of stories friends wrote in the comments.

This kind of preservation also helps with the practical reality that families often share links during an already stressful time. Someone may include a loved one’s writing in an obituary, a memorial page, or a group message. Months later, the link breaks. That moment can feel like losing the person twice. A stable snapshot—what many people mean when they say save webpage snapshot—creates a reference point that can outlast hosting changes and account closures.

If your family is also building a public place for remembrance, you may find it helpful to think of the blog as one part of a broader digital legacy website plan. Funeral.com’s guide on designing a digital memorial page walks through how families choose platforms, privacy settings, and what to include so the page stays usable over time, not just in the first week.

What it may miss (and why you should expect some gaps)

The Wayback Machine is not a magical mirror. Modern websites often depend on outside services and “live” elements that are not fully captured by a snapshot. The Internet Archive has explained that saved pages can display incorrectly because many pages rely on external resources—such as JavaScript libraries, CSS, fonts, and other dependencies—that may not be archived along with the main page, and that dynamic content loaded through JavaScript and APIs may appear incomplete if it is not adequately captured.

In plain language, this means you should not be surprised if a preserved page looks right but some elements do not work. A comment widget might not load. A photo gallery might show blank boxes. A “load more” button might do nothing. Embedded videos sometimes disappear. A site that behaves like an app may archive as a shell.

There are also limits based on access. The Internet Archive notes that some sites are not included or not captured because they are password protected, blocked by robots.txt, or otherwise inaccessible to their systems, and site owners can request exclusions.

This matters for families because many personal blogs contain mixed content. Some posts may be public, while others are behind a login. Some images may be hosted on a third-party service that changes URLs. Some pages may be blocked unintentionally by old settings. If you encounter a “can’t be saved” message, it is not your fault. It is often the structure of the site, not something you did wrong.

How to use “Save Page Now” in a way that preserves what matters most

If you are looking for the simplest path: start with the pages that would be hardest to recreate later. The Internet Archive’s Save Page Now guidance is straightforward: you enter a URL, save the page, and receive a permanent URL for the capture.

What families often need, though, is the “what next?” moment—what to archive first, and in what order, so you get meaningful coverage without turning grief into a technical project.

• Home page (it often links to categories, featured posts, or the most-read writing)
• About page (this usually contains the clearest “in their own words” biography)
• Top posts (start with the posts people have shared most often, or the ones you would want a grandchild to read someday)
• Index pages (category pages, archive-by-month pages, or “start here” pages, because they act like a table of contents)

Keep the process gentle. You do not need to do it all in one sitting. If you can capture the home page and the about page, you have already done something meaningful. If the blog is large, focus on “cornerstone” posts first—long posts that define the person’s voice, rather than every short update.

If you want an easy way to reduce missed pages, capture several types of pages, not just individual posts. A blog post might load fine, but the index page that helps someone find the post later might not have been saved. Capturing both improves the odds that the preserved experience will feel navigable.

The hidden risk: what happens if the domain or hosting changes

One reason families turn to the Wayback Machine is that ownership and access can become complicated quickly. Even when the content “belongs” to your loved one emotionally, the account may be tied to an email address, a password manager, or a subscription that no one else can access. This is a common theme in digital estate work, and Funeral.com’s article on digital legacy planning explains how families use a designated digital executor and secure storage for access details so they can make changes without getting locked out.

If you are actively trying to preserve a website after death, the Wayback Machine should be one layer, not the only layer. It reduces risk, but it does not give you control. Hosting companies can suspend accounts. Domains can expire. A platform can change its policies. A site can disappear for reasons that have nothing to do with the family. Archiving creates a safety net, but it is still a safety net someone else owns.

Pair the archive with an offline backup you control

For true online content backup, you want at least one copy you can store privately. Think of it as the difference between a library and a family photo box. The library is wonderful, but you also want something you can hold.

Depending on how the blog was built, an offline backup might look like exporting the site from its platform, downloading the media library, or saving key pages as PDFs. It might be as simple as copy-and-pasting the most meaningful posts into a document. It might be a set of screenshots for posts where formatting matters. The right approach is the one you can realistically complete.

• Export the blog content if the platform allows it (many blogging platforms provide an export file)
• Download images for cornerstone posts (especially photos that live on third-party hosts)
• Save a “reading copy” (PDFs of key posts, or a document compilation of the writing you most want to keep)

If you are also trying to preserve photos, videos, or voicemails, consider aligning your blog backup with the larger process of protecting digital memories. Funeral.com’s guide on handling photos, videos, and voicemails after a death offers practical ways to save files while setting boundaries so the work does not overwhelm you.

When families do this well, the result is not just “data.” It is a plan. It is a calm sense that the important pieces are safe—even if you do not decide today what the long-term memorial looks like.

Privacy, permissions, and the parts you may want to think through first

Preserving someone’s writing can raise tender questions, especially when the blog includes other people’s stories, comments, or photos. Some families want everything saved publicly. Others want a private archive for the immediate family only. Some want a public memorial page but prefer to keep certain posts offline.

One helpful approach is to decide what your family wants the public to have access to, and what you want preserved for yourselves. Public archiving is a form of publishing, even when the material was already online. If the blog includes sensitive content, consider saving it privately (offline) before you decide whether to archive it publicly.

If you are managing multiple online spaces—social media profiles, subscriptions, email accounts—this decision often fits into a broader closure process. Funeral.com’s digital accounts after a death checklist is designed to help families reduce lockouts and regret by handling the most time-sensitive accounts first.

When the blog is part of a memorial, consider connecting the digital and the tangible

For many families, the blog is not just “content.” It is the voice they miss. One reason memorial websites can help is that they create a central place to share writing, photos, and stories in a way that feels more intentional than a scattered set of links. If your family is thinking about memorial website preservation, it can help to treat the blog archive as foundational material—then build the memorial page in a way that makes the stories easy to find and safe to share.

And sometimes remembrance is not only digital. Some families pair an online memorial with a physical keepsake that can be held, worn, or placed somewhere meaningful. If cremation is part of your plans, that might include a simple urn at home or something smaller and shareable. Funeral.com’s collections for cremation urns for ashes and keepsake cremation urns for ashes are designed for different family needs—whether one person is keeping the ashes at home or multiple relatives want a portion.

If a pet is part of the grief you are carrying, families often want a memorial that includes both human and animal loved ones, and they may choose pet figurine cremation urns for ashes or pet keepsake cremation urns for ashes as a way to keep that bond visible and honored.

For a wearable option, some families choose cremation necklaces so a small portion of ashes can be carried close. If you want a practical overview before choosing, Funeral.com’s cremation jewelry guide walks through materials, filling tips, and how to think about comfort for daily wear. 

None of this replaces the blog. It simply recognizes that memory is often multi-layered. A digital archive protects words. A keepsake can anchor the emotional reality of loss in something steady.

A simple, realistic plan you can complete without burning out

If you take nothing else from this: choose a small set of pages, save them carefully, and create one offline backup you control. The Wayback Machine is best when you treat it as a snapshot tool, not as the only home for your loved one’s writing. The Internet Archive’s own documentation emphasizes the one-page-at-a-time nature of Save Page Now and its ability to save key page elements like images and CSS, while also clarifying that it does not save outlinks or crawl the whole site for you.

In grief, the goal is not perfection. The goal is fewer regrets later. Capturing the essential pages now—while the site is still up—often makes the difference between “we can still read it” and “we wish we had acted sooner.”

FAQs