archived project
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archived project is a project, often an open source repository, that the primary author or maintainer has decided to no longer maintain or accept feedback and has placed into a read-only state that omits the ability to comment or open issues.
Why
- Ensure that users / anyone who encounters your project has a clear understanding of the project status.
- Helps reduce the mental overhead of feeling like you are responsible for projects you have made even if you don't use / maintain them any more.
- Especially important in the era of AI where there are more and more advanced automated security bots and scanners.
How to
Archive a website
- Download (or, if you are using an SSG, generate) a HTML archive of the site.
- Optional: Upload the archive to wherever you want the copy to be available (i.e. a subdomain of your main site, like 2025.example.com, or project.example.com, or example.com/project-docs/).
- Optional: add a banner to your archived page(s) to indicate the page has been archived.
Deprecate a domain
- See "Archive a website" above, then:
- Redirect the http:// and https:// version of your old domain to your newly archived page.
- Replace any links that point to the old site that you control (i.e. on GitHub, Codeberg) with the new domain.
- This ensures that if/when you let the domain expire, as many places as possible point to the archived site.
- Optional: add a banner to your archived page(s) to indicate the page has a new canonical domain.
IndieWeb Examples
capjamesg
capjamesg deprecated the Edit Button browser extension project on 2026-09-16. He:
- Archived the extension on all web app stores where it was available.
- Redirected editbutton [dot] net to https://playground.jamesg.blog/edit-button-extension/, which serves a static archive of the "docs" folder in the project repository.
- Archived the project GitHub repository.
- Added a banner to the top of the archived page saying:
This project has been archived and is no longer maintained. playground.jamesg.blog/edit-button-extension is now the canonical page for this project.
Brainstorming
How to tell a user to update their bookmarks
Tantek Çelik on 2026-09-16 (source):
re: "worth saying on the new page that the canonical location has changed" I think so, and you can put a query string into redirect so it goes to newlocation?from=oldsubdomain and then based on that query param show a message or not whether it's "update your bookmarks" or whatever
