Using Transactional Web Archives To Handle Server Errors

We describe a web archiving application that handles server errors using the most recently archived representation of the requested web resource. The application is developed as an Apache module. It leverages the transactional web archiving tool SiteStory, which archives all previously accessed representations of web resources originating from a website. This application helps to improve the website’s quality of service by temporarily masking server errors from the end user and gaining precious time for the system administrator to debug and recover from server failures. By providing pertinent support to website operations, we aim to reduce the resistance to transactional web archiving, which in turn may lead to a better coverage of web history.