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Amber is a tool for blogs & websites to keep linked content accessible
If a link on your website were to go down, Amber provides your visitors with a snapshot of that link.
There is no need for your visitors to download anything. It all just happens seamlessly and automatically.
Mobile compatibility provides all visitors with the ability to view these snapshots.
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Amber is a tool for blogs & websites to keep linked content accessible
Amber runs directly on your website, storing snapshots as you link.
You can configure the snapshot storage and delivery preferences to fit the needs of your website and visitors.
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Amber is a tool for blogs & websites to keep linked content accessible
Ensure the content to which you link never vanishes down the memory hole.
Mailing List
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society uses this list to communicate major announcements about Amber.
What's the Problem?
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society wants to keep linked content accessible.
Whether links fail because of DDoS attacks, censorship, or just plain old link rot, reliably accessing linked content is a problem for Internet users everywhere.
This isn't a new problem.1 Some centralized initiatives, such as the Internet Archive and Perma.cc, are attempting to snapshot and preserve certain web pages.
49
percent of links
percent of links
in Supreme
court
decisions are dead 2
Wikipedia articles
contain
dead
external links 3
But more and more, just a handful of centralized entities host information online. Online centralization creates “choke points” that can restrict access to web content.
The more routes we provide to information, the more all people can freely share that information, even in the face of filtering or blockages.
AMBER ADDS TO THESE ROUTES.
What Amber Does
What Amber does
Amber is an open source tool for websites to provide their visitors persistent routes to information. It automatically preserves a snapshot of every page linked to on a website, giving visitors a fallback option if links become inaccessible.
If one of the pages linked to on this website were to ever go down, Amber can provide visitors with access to an alternate version. This safeguards the promise of the URL: that information placed online can remain there, even amidst network or endpoint disruptions.
Install
Install the Amber plugin on your Content Management System.
Customize
Configure the storage and delivery preferences to fit the needs of your website.
Preserve
Amber automatically preserves a snapshot of each outgoing link in your content.
Save the Day
If a link goes down, your website will provide your visitors with a snapshot of that link.
Lots of copies keep stuff safe.4
By default, Amber stores snapshots directly on the host website. But users can choose to store snapshots using a combination of the following third party storage and archiving systems:
Amber users can choose to use these existing services to free up space, take advantage of donated host space, or simply to contribute to existing web preservation efforts.
Download
Amber is available as a plugin for WordPress and as a module for Drupal. It can be installed from the official WordPress plugin and Drupal module directories.
Want to suggest Amber to your IT team, but not sure what system your organization runs? Sites like WhatCMS.org can easily help to identify if your website is compatible.
Install the Drupal module
106 kb (ZIP) / 88 kb (Tarball)
Requirements:
Drupal 7
PHP 5.3 or higher
cURL
For those websites who run a custom CMS or none at all, we've also built modules for Apache and Nginx. These modules are more rudimentary and do not include external-archive capability—snapshots are only stored on the host server itself—but we welcome functionality contributions to our code base.
Documentation
Amber is a work in progress. If you encounter any issues, the Berkman Klein Center's developers want to know about it. You have two options for reporting issues:
1. Via Github. Have a Github account? Awesome. Create an issue in the repo that corresponds to your CMS, and you'll automatically be subscribed to the issue and notified of any updates, including when it's closed.
2. Via web form. No Github account? No problem. Report an issue at feedback.amberlink.org.
Who Can Use Amber
Amber is useful for virtually any website or blog that has an interest in preserving the content to which it links. Here is a small sample of websites whose visitors would receive an immediate benefit:
Organizations |
Individuals |
| News Outlets | Political Bloggers |
| Fact-Checking Organizations | Researchers |
| Human Rights Groups | Free Speech Advocates |
| Digital Archives | Internet Freedom Activists |
| Blogging Platforms | Lifestyle Bloggers |
| Wikis | Students |