#LookOverThere

2025-05-22

Just noticed an issue with Look Over There!¹ where some of the sites I was forwarding to archive.org began to fail.

I’ve now documented the proper way to redirect to archive.org in Look Over There! and I also wrote a brief post on the relevant Reddit to alert the folks at The Internet Archive about this and suggest an improvement that could benefit findability on sites with redirects in general:

reddit.com/r/theinternetarchiv

¹ e.g., See our instance for Small Technology Foundation at look-over-there.small-web.org

CC @textfiles @brewsterkahle

#TheInternetArchive #LookOverThere #SmallWeb #SmallTech #web #archiving

Screenshot of Look Over There!’s admin interface, now showing an information callout with instructions on how to properly foward to The Internet Archive:

When forwarding to The Internet Archive, make sure you forward to a specific crawl (ensure the URL has the crawl timestamp in it). If not, the next time it crawls the site, it will find the redirect to itself and your redirect will start to fail.

e.g., When forwarding better.fyi:

Correct: https://web.archive.org/web/20250418214123/https://better.fyi/
Incorrect: https://web.archive.org/web/https://better.fyi/
2025-05-10

…And there are more interesting tid-bits in there too:

• See how I’m pushing Kitten’s Streaming HTML to its logical conclusion and streaming JavaScript from the server to the client to keep all logic on the server while implementing a client-side feature (copy to clipboard): codeberg.org/small-web/look-ov

• Following on from that, note how the Toast component that’s triggered when something is copied looks (under the hood, Streaming HTML is htmx + WebSockets + some Kitten-specific magic and glues it all together and adds syntactic sugar): codeberg.org/small-web/look-ov

• Finally, check out how layout components and slots work: codeberg.org/small-web/look-ov

I think that’s all the intersting stuff I can spot at the moment.

Have fun!

:kitten:💕

#Kitten #SmallWeb #SmallTech #SmallTechnologyFoundation #LookOverThere #code #StreamingHTML #htmx #websockets #nodeJS #web #dev

2025-05-10

You can really get a feel for what authoring a simple web app is like in Kitten (with the latest techniques/features), by checking out the source code for Look Over There!, the multi-site forwarding app with TLS forwarding support that I built recently:

codeberg.org/small-web/look-ov

There’s an instance of it I’m hosting for us at look-over-there.small-web.org to forward our archived sites – e.g., web0.small-web.org – to archive.org so we don’t break links on the web.

If you want to run it locally, install Kitten (kitten.small-web.org) and then type: kitten run codeberg.org/small-web/look-ov (you can also clone the git repo manually and just run kitten from the working directory).

Interesting places to look:

• The index page (shows use of a Markdown page that imports and uses Kitten components) codeberg.org/small-web/look-ov

• The admin page (notice the lock emoji at the end of the name? That’s all you need to add to a route to make use of Kitten’s automatic authentication. Since every Kitten site/app is protected by public-key encryption and we don’t have the concept of users (each site/app on the Small Web is owned by one person), the whole process can be automated for you. codeberg.org/small-web/look-ov

• The Redirection component. This is what does all the hard work on the admin page. Along with the admin page, they showcase Kitten’s new/alternative (and as-of-yet mostly undocumented) class-based component model with event bubbling on the component hierarchy on the server. (Since this is resource intensive, it’s recommended you use it only when implementing authenticated routes where you’re sure only the site’s owner will be accessing the route.) codeberg.org/small-web/look-ov

In any case, as Kitten and the rest of the Small Web ecosystem matures further, I’ll be documenting all this better and there will be even more examples and tutorials but, in case you’re one of those inquisitive types and you want to see what web development can be like if you’re *not* building centralised people farming machinery for Big Tech, have a play with Kitten.

:kitten:💕

#Kitten #SmallWeb #SmallTech #SmallTechnologyFoundation #LookOverThere #code #web #dev

Screenshot of the Look Over There! admin interface showing five redirections to archive.org (for cleanuptheweb.org, comet.small-web.org, better.fyi, ind.ie, and web0.small-web.org). There’s also a simple form for adding a redirection and instructions:

Look Over There!⁠ 
(With apologies to Jaida Essence Hall)

Kitten logo: a minimalist illustation of an adorable kitten’s head with pink nose and ears. Made with Kitten
Instructions

Create a DNS A record pointing to 157.90.155.45 for the domain you want to redirect.
Wait for your DNS changes to propagate (ping the domain to check).
Add your redirection using the form below.
Due to Let’s Encrypt rate limits, you may add 93 more redirections (maximum 10 every 3 hours).
2025-04-28

Ooh, what’s this?… Look Over There!
(With apologies to Jaida Essence Hall)

So the little app I teased earlier is ready and deployed and I have our own instance running at:

look-over-there.small-web.org

Look Over There! lets you forward multiple domains to different URLs with full HTTPS support.

Why?

We have a number of older sites that are becoming a chore/expensive to maintain and yet I don’t want to break the web. So I thought, hey, I’ll just use the “url forwarding” feature of my domain registrar to forward them to their archived versions on archive.org.

Ah, not so fast, young cricket… seems some domain registrars’ implementations of this feature do not work if the domain being forwarded is accessed via HTTPS (yes, in 2025).

So, given Kitten¹ uses Auto Encrypt² to automatically provision Let’s Encrypt certificates, I added a domain forwarding feature to it and created Look Over There! as a friendly/simple app that provides a visual interface to it.

To see it in action, hit cleanuptheweb.org and you should get forwarded to the archived version of it on archive.org. I’m going to be adding more of our sites to the list in the coming days as part of an effort to reduce my maintenance load and cut down our expenses at Small Technology Foundation.

Since it’s Small Web, this particular instance is just for us. However, you can run your own copy on a VPS (or even a little single-board computer at home, etc.) A link to the source code repository is on the site. Once Domain³ is ready for use (later this year 🤞), setting up your own instance of a Small Web app at your own server will take less than a minute.

I hope this little tool, along with the 404→307 (evergreen web) technique⁴, helps us to nurture an evergreen web and avoid link rot. (And the source code, as little as there is because Kitten does so much for you, is a good resource if you want to learn about Kitten’s new class-based component and page model which I haven’t yet had a chance to properly document.)

Enjoy!

:kitten:💕

¹ kitten.small-web.org
² codeberg.org/small-tech/auto-e
³ codeberg.org/domain/app
4042307.org

#LookOverThere #Kitten #SmallWeb #SmallTech #web #archiving #evergreenWeb #dontBreakTheWeb #LetsEncrypt #https #TLS #webForwarding #urlForwarding #Domain

Screenshot of the unauthenticated index page of Look Over There!, running at look-over-there.small-web.org.

Full text:

Look Over There!⁠ 
(With apologies to Jaida Essence Hall)

Kitten logo: a minimalist illustation of an adorable kitten’s head with pink nose and ears. Made with Kitten
This is a domain redirection (URL forwarding) server.

Look Over There! was written to help with web archiving. You can use it to forward your old sites to their archived versions on archive.org (or to any other web URL) to ensure existing links to your site do not break.

Things you can do here

Administer this server[1]
View source[2]
Learn about Kitten, the Small Web framework/server used to create/run this app.
Requires authentication. ↩︎
And perhaps run your own server? ↩︎
Look Over There! automatically provisions SSL certificates redirected domains.

Due to Let’s Encrypt rate limits, you can add up to 98 redirections (maximum 10 every 3 hours).

Look Over There! is part of a series of tools and processes by Small Technology Foundation to cultivate an evergreen web where we don’t arbitrarily break old links.

Another such initiative is 404 → 307, where missing pages on the latest version of a site are forwarded to the old version of a site that is still running on a different server.

Kitten, which Look Over There! is written in, has native support for 404 → 307.Screenshot of the authenticated /admin route on Look Over There!, running at look-over-there.small-web.org.

There are instructions for setting up DNS to point to the IP address on the server for the domains you want to forward and a list of Active redirections (there’s just one for now, for cleanuptheweb.org, which forwards to a URL on archive.org.

There’s also an add redirection form with a from field for the domain an arrow and a to field for the URL to forward to, followed by an Add button. For entries in the Active redirections section, the Add button is replaced with a Remove button.

There’s also a Made with Kitten button with a minimalist grey kitten face logo with pink ears.

Intructions, full text:

Create a DNS A record pointing to 157.90.155.45 for the domain you want to redirect.
Wait for your DNS changes to propagate (ping the domain to check).
Add your redirection using the form below.
Due to Let’s Encrypt rate limits, you may add 97 more redirections (maximum 10 every 3 hours).

Funding link in footer, full text:

Like this? Fund us!

Small Technology Foundation is a tiny, independent not-for-profit.

We exist in part thanks to patronage by people like you. If you share our vision and want to support our work, please become a patron or donate to us today and help us continue to exist.
MugsysRapSheet 🔩🐑🐘MugsysRapSheet
2024-06-29

@br00t4c
Criticizing the wife of a Potus for how she cares for her husband is something will never have to worry about with .

2023-12-06

Sounds like Trump Jaida Essence Hall-ed the dictator question #LookOverThere

2023-02-21

@BrandonM Of course, you are welcome to your opinion, but the facts remain that what Andrew has been accused of is heinous and far worse than anything Harry and Meghan have ever done. I think it is more than a coincidence that the focus was shifted from him to H+M just after his infamous interview. 'The Firm' created a smokescreen. #LookOverThere

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