 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
The Wayback Machine is a service which can be used to cite archived copies of web pages used by articles. This is useful if a web page has changed, moved, or disappeared; links to the original content can be retained. This process can be performed automatically, using the web interface for User:InternetArchiveBot.
Editors are encouraged to add an archive link as a part of each citation, or at least submit the referenced URL for archiving, at the same time that each citation is created or updated. New URLs added to Wikipedia articles (but not other pages) are usually automatically archived by a bot.
Visit the webform at https://web.archive.org, enter the original URL of the web page of interest in the "Wayback Machine" search box and then hit return/enter. The next screen may:
- show a calendar listing the snapshot dates for all archived copies of that page, or
- show a box near the bottom of the page with a link inviting the user to
Save this url in the Wayback Machine,
This is the code that needs to be added to an existing {{cite web}} or similar template:
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/<YYYYMMDDhhmmss>/http://www.originalurl.example.com |archive-date=<YYYY-MM-DD> |url-status=dead