Tools To Check Historical Design Of a Website

CoreNetworkZ Tech Solutions is a professional website design and development company started in 2009. When I started this company, responsive web development was not a common concept.

Since then, the web development field has seen many trends. I developed many websites for our clients to satisfy the trend changes. Today's article covers how I view the historical web designs of any website.

Young web designers and front-end developers may feel that viewing templates based on older technologies is unnecessary. Sonia Agarwal, a Computer Science student, mentioned a similar opinion in the comment section.

I cannot blame them because they do not have the nostalgia we senior web developers have.

Gone are the days of designing websites with HTML tables, and now everyone uses CSS. Now, new templates follow responsive concepts because of the popularity of smartphones and tablets.

Many professional websites change their designs to keep up with the latest technology and trends. None of the business owners want to have company websites based on old technologies.

It is a must for fresh candidates to learn responsive design and bootstrap to get a job as a web developer. However, it is interesting to view the design changes of popular brands over time to understand how they responded to technology changes.

If you are interested in checking the historical outlook of a website, you can view its historical screenshot using online tools explained in this guide. Most of those tools are free.

Monica Calamai and Maria Pia Giovannini asked me in the comment section to mention a few tools to check the historical website templates. So, I list two free tools here.

1. Internet Archive Wayback Machine

   Whenever I want to see the historical layout of a website, the first tool that comes to my mind is the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. They have a large collection of web screenshots saved in their database.

   It is very easy to use this tool

   Here I demonstrate the procedure to find historical layouts of CoreNetworkZ.com using this tool. You can use the same steps for any domain name.

   
   

   • Visit the link http://archive.org/web/

   • Type http://www.corenetworkz.com and press the 'BROWSE HISTORY' button.

     
     
     
     

   • Wayback Machine displays the number of screenshots taken by them over time. All you have to do is click on the date on which they have a screenshot saved.

     
     
     
     

   • Click the blue circle to view the screenshot taken that day.

     
     

   This tool is enough, but Monica Calamai asked to mention one more tool.

   
   

2. Domain Tools Screenshot History

   Another important tool to view the past design of a website is Domain Tools Screenshot History. It is also a free service and very easy to use. Let me explain how to check the historical screenshots of CoreNetworkZ.com with Domain Tools.

   
   

   • Visit the link http://www.domaintools.com/research/screenshot-history/

     
     

   • Type corenetworkz.com without WWW or http:// and press the LOOKUP button.

     
     

   • See how it displays all available screenshots of CoreNetworkZ.com.

     
     

You can use the above two free tools to check older website templates.

Giusy Doria asked me in the comments whether these tools are helpful for ordinary people without technical backgrounds. My answer is yes. These services are handy for several reasons.

• It is easy for a website designer to find out the past layout of an expired domain no longer available with Google Cache.

  Update:- Google no longer provides caching service.

  One of my friends accidentally lost his domain name and hosting. He purchased it back from the expired domain bidding but lost the website files. With the help of http://archive.org/web/, I recovered his website template.

  
  

• These services help us closely monitor how big brands accommodate the latest technologies in their websites over time.