I've been noticing this a lot lately in one of my little hobbies of Halloween events. There's so much history from events in the early 2000s that has been lost. So many links in ancient web forums that 404 and aren't in the Internet archive. Info from the 2010s is much better but still missing a lot of media. As an individual, I certainly don't have the resources of some of the organizations listed in this article but I've been trying to do what I can and mirror important sites. I dread seeing what the future looks like as more and more of the communities in my niche move onto discord and away from more traditional web forums.
ETA: The issue I face is two-fold. More pressingly, there are files just missing. Nothing I can do about that barring someone magically having them downloaded to an old PC. But also interesting is working with old formats. The 2000s/early 2010s Halloween Horror Nights websites were all written in Flash. They have tons of little Easter eggs and information for the event obsessives like me. Between fan backups and the Internet archive, the files are pretty complete thankfully. But since Flash has been dead for a while, I have to rely on the Ruffles Flash emulator to get it running on the web. But that doesn't work super well. On my list of things to do is to contribute to the project to try to get some of the files working.
In case anyone is curious about my backup of the event or if you're also a fan and have any of the files listed to share and archive, my site is hhncrypt.com!
Just yesterday I went searching for a memorial page for someone who died in 2005. It's still been maintained ever since then, and I was grateful to read through it again.
Even a single-file website with 2 photos can be important to somebody. Thanks.
Install Firefox ESR 52 (or one of various Palemoon offsprings still supporting Netscape plugins) and Flash Plugin 32.0.0.371. That's it, you have a dedicated browser with Flash working the exact same way it worked. As long as that software remains compatible with newer operating systems, you don't even need to start a virtual machine. Of course, flash content that requires data from external servers won't work without them (can sometimes be fixed with a proxy server and manual fiddling), and some old Flash versions can be partially incompatible with final plugin, but that's a deeper dive into that technology.
ETA: The issue I face is two-fold. More pressingly, there are files just missing. Nothing I can do about that barring someone magically having them downloaded to an old PC. But also interesting is working with old formats. The 2000s/early 2010s Halloween Horror Nights websites were all written in Flash. They have tons of little Easter eggs and information for the event obsessives like me. Between fan backups and the Internet archive, the files are pretty complete thankfully. But since Flash has been dead for a while, I have to rely on the Ruffles Flash emulator to get it running on the web. But that doesn't work super well. On my list of things to do is to contribute to the project to try to get some of the files working.
In case anyone is curious about my backup of the event or if you're also a fan and have any of the files listed to share and archive, my site is hhncrypt.com!