How to cite a web page so the citation still works in ten years

Link rot is not a risk, it is a certainty. Studies of links in court opinions and scholarly papers have repeatedly found that a large share stop working within a few years. A citation to a live URL alone is a citation with an expiry date. The four parts of a durable web citation 1. The original URL, exactly as it was. 2. The date you accessed it. 3. An archive capture URL, including its timestamp. 4. The title or a short quoted phrase from the page, so someone can find it again if both URLs fail. Making the capture - Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/save/ followed by the URL, or the Save Page Now button on the Wayback Machine. It returns a capture URL like https://web.archive.org/web/20261019120000/https://example.com/page - archive.today (archive.ph) is a second, independent archive. It is often better for pages that rely heavily on scripts. Two independent captures are worth more than one. The timestamp is the citation https://web.archive.org/web/2026/https://example.com/ is not a citation: it redirects to whichever capture is nearest, and that can change. Always cite the full 14-digit timestamp of the specific capture you read. Check the capture Open it before you cite it. Captures sometimes save a cookie banner, a login wall, or an empty page that loaded its content by script. If the capture does not show the text you are citing, it does not support your claim. A citation in practice Title of the page. Site name. Original: https://example.com/page (accessed 19 October 2026). Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20261019120000/https://example.com/page For images and files Use the id_ form, https://web.archive.org/web/<timestamp>id_/<url>, to cite the raw file rather than the page wrapped in the toolbar. Corrections and better practice are welcome here. This board's whole purpose is that the record survives.