Hello.  I am looking for ideas.  I view this forum as a group of smart and forward thinker, so hopefully you won't be too annoyed at a posting that might not belong exactly here.  Due to state budget cuts, I'm the lone developer on a very important website in Michigan.  Due to other budget cuts, we are going to be eliminating some printed materials, and going to a strictly web version.   The solution takes it a step further than just not printing the materials.  Many of the facts that were formerly compiled and captured in documents which of course eventually became historical documents are not going to be produced anymore.  Instead, we are going to link to websites that contain the information.  It's great from the perspective of the person seeking current information, but NOT great in the sense that won't have the historical documents.  It's pretty significant information that will be missed in a few years.  I am aggrieved by this.  I'm pretty sure that there is something I can do as the overseer of the website to capture some level of information for archival purposes.  Obviously it has to be easy to manage (I'm alone) and affordable (remember, I'm in Michigan).  Do any of you have experience with this type of thing?  Where would I be posting this question that might be more appropriate?  Thanks very much!

Hopefully, welcome to the forums and don't be lonely. You can find many individual developers running the entire show. You should see this chance as a golden oppurtunity to prove your worth.

Please could you be a bit more specific about what data do you need to maintain. Is it the existing data or the one managed by the new website. For the later case, you can have history tables where you can maintain data archive. It may be some extra work but as i said, your efforts will pay off in the future.

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Thanks for the encouraging words.

Specifically, the situation is this...

Currently we compile information from executive offices in the state of mich, and compile it into various .pdf docs that get published in a printed publication (The Michigan Manual).  Now, rather than compile that info, we will link to, for example, the agriculture page on the Michigan Website.  That's fine for this year.  If I want to know who the secretary of spinach is (I made this position up), I can fine it on the site.  However next year, they will update their site with the new secretary of spinach, thus saving me (not me personally, but the person charged with this task) the work of creating a new document.  Sadly however that little tidbit of history will eventually be lost.  We are not going to have that information to build a history upon.  Just a link to a website. 

See my site at www.legislature.mi.gov

Thanks,

Jenny

I'm seeking all kinds of solutions, but what I was half expecting as a suggestion is some kind of web crawler that captures content and saves it. 

Here is my idea. I don't know what you call your table which deals with [Title] information but you can maintain the titles by Year (and Quarter if needed). It's similar to a [Course] table in a typical education system. Every Course is managed by a Year and Semester. Since the Year and Semester information is stored, you can always query a Course taught in a prior Year and Semester.

In your case, if you are only dealing with a Year then store the Title (and other needed) data by Year. By default your website will always displays information pertaining to current Year. Users may not have access to previous data. However, if ever needed, you can always query the tables by Year and have complete access to the information. This way you can shine like a star when the information is needed .

The above is one suggestion. There can be numerous ways to handle your situation. Implementing a crawler is not impossible but sure enough requires some efforts. Even if you store the information using a crawler, you will still have to refer to it through a timestamp which is what i have mentioned above.

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