#archivetip — Public Fediverse posts

Today’s #WASSUP tip: a search shortcut for saving pages in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Yes this is a lot like yesterday’s tip, except for archiving a page, rather than looking it up.

For example if you try looking up a page in the Internet Archive and it’s not there.

Or if you find an “interesting” page, and want to blog it later, you may want to save a copy of it in the Internet Archive as you are seeing it today, because when you look later it may have changed (or gone away).

I used to do this by typing "https://web.archive.org/save/" into the browser address bar and then pasting the link I want to save in the archive.

Again this is not really a “search engine”, however Firefox’s search engine shortcuts simplifies this greatly (less typing).

Here’s how to create a save shortcut for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:

1. open Firefox Preferences ("Firefox" menu, "Preferences" item)
2. select "🔍 Search" from the left column
3. click the [ + Add search engine ] button
4. enter "Internet Archive Save" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
5. enter "https://web.archive.org/save/%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
6. enter "ias" into the Keyword field (without quotes)

When viewing a page that I want to save in the Internet Archive:

1. copy its link
2. activate the browser address bar (cmd-L does this in Firefox and Safari)
3. type "ias " (without the quotes)
4. paste the link I had copied earlier, and press return

Wait a few seconds (could take up to a few minutes) and the Internet Archive should save the page and show you the saved version.

If it fails for any reason (happens sometimes), likes takes a while and then displays something like:

"Sorry / Job failed"

You can click the "Return to Save Page Now" link on the page, and try pasting the link one more time into the text input box and pressing return.

If it says something like

"The target server blocks access to [URL]. (HTTP status=403)"

(literally happened to me today)

or some other HTTP status error code (5xx or 4xx), then you can try emailing the IT staff of the site you were trying to archive by emailing "webmaster@" the domain of that URL and perhaps CC: help@ that domain.

E.g. if the URL was https://example.com/some-path then you would email "webmaster@example.com, help@example.com".

With something like:

----

Dear [Domain Name] Webmaster,

Could you check your server configuration and explicitly allow the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to make historical archive copies of your pages?

This is important for the history of the open web, and greatly helps journalists, bloggers, and historians.

Please allow their User Agent: "archive.org_bot" to crawl and archive your site. More info on their "archive.org_bot" here: https://archive.org/details/archive.org_bot

Thank you for your consideration!

[sign your name]

----

Replace the two [ bracket phrases ] the domain name of the link you were trying to archive and your name respectively.

Good luck and happy internet archiving!

Previously: https://tantek.com/2026/249/t1/internet-archive-wayback-machine-search-shortcut

This is my sixth #WASSUP #WASSUP2026 post, and fourth useful web tip for September.

#InternetArchive #WaybackMachine #save #searchShortcut #Firefox #FirefoxSearch #archive #archives #tip #webTip #browserTip #webBrowserTip #archiveTip