In recent days many people have shown interest in making sure the Wayback Machine has copies of the web pages they care about most. These saved pages can be cited, shared, linked to – and they will continue to exist even after the original page changes or is removed from the web.

There are several ways to save pages and whole sites so that they appear in the Wayback Machine. Here are 6 of them.

1. Save Page Now

Put a URL into the form, press the button, and we save the page. You will instantly have a permanent URL for your page.

At the moment, there are a few exceptions for this method – some sites prohibit crawling, a few have SSL (security) settings that make it break – but this method will work for most pages. The feature saves the page you enter including the images and CSS. It does not save any of the outlinks, and can’t be used to initiate a crawl of an entire web site. We do not keep your IP address, so your submission is anonymous.

2. Chrome extension

Install the Wayback Machine Chrome extension in your browser. Go to a page you want to archive, click the icon in your toolbar, and select Save Page Now. We will save the page and give you a permanent URL.

The same provisos from “Save Page Now” apply – there are some pages where it won’t work, and it only saves one page at a time. One plus to installing the extension though is that now as you surf around, when you run into a missing page we will alert you if we have a saved copy.

We also have a “Wayback Machine” Firefox add-on

A “Wayback Machine” Safari Extension

A “Wayback Machine” iOS app

And a “Wayback Machine” Android app

3. Wikipedia JavaScript Bookmarklet

Nobody loves a primary source more than a Wikipedia editor. To that end, they offer a Wayback Machine JavaScript Bookmarklet that allows you to quickly save a web page from any browser.

4. Volunteer for Archive Team

Archive Team is an entirely volunteer driven group who are interested in saving Internet history. Many of the sites and pages they save end up in the Wayback Machine. Visit the Archive Team site to learn more about how to volunteer with them.

5. Sign up for an Archive-It Account

Archive-It is a subscription service provided by Internet Archive that allows you to run your own crawling projects without any technical expertise. Tell us what to crawl and how often to crawl it, and we execute the crawl and put the results in the Wayback Machine.

Archive-It is a paid subscription service with technical and web archivist support. This option is most appropriate for organizations that have a mandate to save certain types or categories of web content on a regular basis. If your institution is a current Archive-It partner, contact them for how you can contribute.

6. End of Term Archive

Every time the US government administration changes, Internet Archive works with partners to make a copy of government-related sites and web presences. We call it the End of Term Archive. You can help us discover new government sites by using the Nomination Tool to suggest pages or sites. These nominations are added to the crawl and end up in the Wayback Machine.

The Internet Archive has been saving web pages for 20 years. This archive has been built by thousands of people, and we would like you to help. Use one of the methods above to make sure we have the pages you care about.