Webs
| Webs | |
| |
| |
| URL | https://www.webs.com/ |
| Status | Closing |
| Archiving status | Upcoming... |
| Archiving type | Unknown |
| Project source | webs-grab |
| IRC channel | #webbed (on hackint) |
Webs (formerly Freewebs) is a web host founded in 2001 offering free and paid website hosting. It is shutting down on 2021-03-31 with paid sites being partially migrated to the parent company Vistaprint.[1] As of 2014, at least 55 million sites have been created with Webs, according to the site's 404 page.[2]
Site Structure
Sites hosted on Webs are accessible from sitename.webs.com, freewebs.com/sitename, and the site's custom domain, if configured. The site owner can choose the primary URL that can be used to access the site, as well as change the site name from an older user settings page.
Most sites contain a robots.txt file at /robots.txt and a sitemap at /sitemap.xml, though some older sites appear to lack a sitemap. Sitemaps also contain a last modified date which appears to always be the same for all pages in the sitemap. The /sitemap.xml file does not seem to be accessible under the freewebs.com URL for a website.
Site Builders
Analytics code in the source code of all pages hosted by Webs (search for "webs.stats") indicates the site builder used to create the website. Possible values for "builderType" include "SB_1_OR_2" for sites created by the first two generations of site builders and "SB_3" for the third generation site builder.
"SB_3" was also used by Vistaprint for their previous site builder (known as Websites (V3)), though Vistaprint now uses a new site builder known as Websites (V4), which is referred to in "builderType" as "tower". The infrastructure for "SB_3" is shared between Webs and Vistaprint; features between the products are nearly identical and the website/user ID counter is shared between the two companies. Vistaprint Websites (V4) now uses an infrastructure that is mostly separate from Webs (it seems statistics collection may still be shared).
Archiving info
(thanks to tech234a) Found a REST API that might be able to list sites if someone can figure out how to authenticate with it https://web.archive.org/web/20140925192433/wiki.developers.webs.com/wiki/REST_API Found from: https://github.com/websdotcom/webs-api-client-java See also: https://github.com/websdotcom/webs-api-client-ruby This will redirect to the site for the given ID http://profiles.members.webs.com/Profile/index.jsp?userID= For example: http://profiles.members.webs.com/Profile/index.jsp?userID=20257 which matches the site ID in the API documentation Looks like it uses a Javascript-based redirect Response content is <script>document.location='https://haroon.webs.com/';</script>\n
Example: https://gist.github.com/tech234a/ed30fe74c8170ffb507b258090d720cf
Gallery
Freewebs in February 2008, before it became Webs
References