Using static websites for tiny archives
The author describes using static websites to organize small personal digital archives in a deliberate and sustainable way. Each collection, such as screenshots or bookmarks, is stored in a folder with a hand-written HTML interface for browsing and metadata display. This low-tech approach avoids complex dependencies and aims for long-term accessibility and simplicity.
- ▪The author creates static websites for personal archives like scanned documents, screenshots, bookmarks, and media files.
- ▪Each website is built with plain HTML and JavaScript, stored locally, and opened directly in a browser without a web server.
- ▪These websites use custom designs and metadata to improve searchability and organization beyond what file systems or apps offer.
- ▪The approach avoids build tools, frameworks, and maintenance-heavy software in favor of longevity and simplicity.
- ▪Previously tried methods included file folders, tagging apps like Evernote, and custom-built tools, none of which were sustainable for the author.
Hacker News (Newest) files mainly under programming. We currently carry 5,306 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Alexwlchan |
| Canonical URL | https://alexwlchan.net/2024/static-websites/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 16 May 2026 13:37:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-16T13:40:18.659Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-16T13:40:18.659Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 9FmGdaJOoFJi |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Using static websites for tiny archivesPosted 16 October 2024Also filed in Static websitesIn my previous post, I talked about how I’m trying to be more intentional and deliberate with my digital data. I don’t just want to keep everything – I want to keep stuff that I’m actually going to look at again. As part of that process, I’m trying to be better about organising my files. Keeping something is pointless if I can’t find it later.Over the last year or so, I’ve been creating static websites to browse my local archives.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Alexwlchan.
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