Bringing It All Back. How to Rebuild a Website Using Archived Assets and Code.

Sometimes, the only copy of a website that ever existed… isn’t on a backup drive, or a dev repo, or even the owner’s laptop. It’s in the Wayback Machine.

Maybe the domain expired. Maybe the server crashed. Maybe the project was abandoned and someone just forgot to save anything. Who knows? It happens more often than most people want to admit.

But here’s the good news: if it was ever publicly accessible, there’s a good chance it’s still floating around in archive.org. Not just the main pages, but the stylesheets, the images, and often even the scripts.

And with some patience - and the right process - you can rebuild the entire site from archived pieces. This is how you do it.

Map the Old Site’s Structure

Start by identifying the page list. You’ll want to know not just the homepage, but every internal URL, blog post, product page, contact form - everything that was part of the original site.

Use the Wayback Machine to get the top-level view, but for serious rebuilding, we strongly recommend Smartial’s WScanner tool to generate a full list of all archived URLs for a domain. You can filter by year or scope, and it’ll even group results by path.

Once you have the full list, export it to a spreadsheet. This becomes your blueprint.

You’ll now be working through the list page by page, piece by piece, like assembling a puzzle from an attic box full of mismatched parts.

Save the HTML

Open each page in the Wayback Machine, ideally the most complete or recent version that still loads properly. Use the "View Source" option in your browser to grab the raw HTML - not the rendered version.

Paste this into a local .html file and save it. Repeat for each important page.

Some pages may redirect or fail to load completely. In that case, go back to earlier snapshots or use the "Changes" feature to locate the last viable version - like we covered in our guide on detecting content updates with the Wayback Machine.

The goal isn’t to recreate everything exactly - but to preserve the substance, layout, and feel of what was once there.

Extract CSS and JavaScript

The HTML alone won’t do much good if it’s unstyled or non-functional.

Using your local HTML files, look for links to external assets:

These need to be resolved to archived versions. You can reconstruct the archived asset URL like this:

But if you’re handling dozens or hundreds of assets, there’s a better way - use Smartial’s Wayback File Sniffer to scan for all non-text files (CSS, JS, fonts, etc.) tied to the domain.

Download what you need and store the files locally. Then update your HTML to point to your saved versions, not to live or archived URLs.

This makes your rebuild stable, portable, and independent of archive.org.

Recover Images and Media

Most websites rely heavily on images - whether for layout, branding, content, or navigation. If the visuals are missing, even the best HTML structure will feel bare.

Fortunately, images are usually archived along with the HTML. They’re just not always rendered properly.

Use the Sniffer tool again to pull up all .jpg, .png, .svg, and .gif files. Then rename and organize them into /images/ folders locally.

If you’re missing some media, check multiple snapshots or try to deduce alternate filenames or paths.

We dive deeper into this process in our article on retrieving images from archived pages. There’s often more visual content saved than what the page appears to show.

Clean and Reconnect

Once you’ve downloaded the HTML, CSS, JS, and images:

• Update all asset paths to local references (./css/style.css, ./images/logo.png)

• Remove any archive.org-specific wrappers or JavaScript from the HTML

• Fix broken <a> tags or malformed attributes

• Replace Wayback navigation elements with clean headers or footers

This step is part cleanup, part repair. You’re not just restoring - you’re making the site stand on its own again.

You can go further and rebuild it in a CMS or static site generator if you want to modernize it.

And Finally - Document What You’ve Rebuilt

It’s a good idea to keep a log of what you’ve recovered, what you’ve approximated, and what was lost. Add a README.html or a text file describing:

• The source snapshot dates used

• Any pages that couldn’t be salvaged

• Whether forms, logins, or interactive parts were removed or simulated

This helps future viewers (or future you) understand the context. You’re not just preserving content but history.

Websites Are Memory

When you rebuild a site from archived assets, you’re doing more than restoring some code. You’re piecing together a moment in time. A message that someone once tried to share. A product, a community, a voice.

Maybe no one else remembers it. Maybe the domain’s been parked and forgotten.
But that site lived, and it mattered enough to be archived.

Bringing it back - even partially - isn’t just technical work, but a kind of web archaeology. And like any good dig, it takes patience, care, and the right tools.

Luckily, you’ve got them. So take your time.