Cloudflare will use archive from Wayback Machine for Always Online service

Cloudflare will use the archive of the Wayback Machine for the Always Online service. When the original host of a site is offline and Cloudflare itself does not have a cached page, the service can grab the most recently archived page from Wayback Machine.

With the Always Online service, Cloudflare archives a static version of a website itself. This version can be served to users by Cloudflare if the original host of a website cannot be accessed for some reason. Should Cloudflare not have an archived version of a page, the Always Online service will now be able to consult the Wayback Machine archive.

This new Always Online version is currently in beta, but Cloudflare customers can choose to switch to the new version now. Cloudflare wants to switch completely to the version with the Wayback Machine integration ‘soon’. When presented with a cached or archived page, users will see a banner stating that the original host is offline. Services that require contact with the original server – such as online shopping – are not possible with the Always Online service.

Cloudflare and Wayback Machine Administrator Internet Archive also announce that the Wayback Machine will automatically archive websites using Always Online. For this too, websites must use the beta version of Always Online. When hosts activate this, Cloudflare sends certain information – including the hostname and popular URLs – to Internet Archive. With that information, the Wayback Machine can crawl and archive a website ‘regularly’. This new feature will archive more URLs “that might not have otherwise been found by the Internet Archive”, according to Cloudflare.