What about LEGO's past theme websites?

[Raphy]

Hey guyse. :D

I was wondering, when a theme is discontinued (for example, Adventurers, well, with the exception of the new Pharaoh's Quest, I'm talkin' real-deal Johnny Thunder stuff here), the mini-website along with it is eliminated. It's gone. Harray, Harray, no, it's all over! He's gone! *sob*

After that pitiful attempt at comedic melodrama, I have a question: where do the websites go? Do they pass on to some mystic afterlife? Are they stored somewhere, on servers at LEGO? Or are they just deleted?

Questions, questions. :P

Edited November 5, 2010 by Raphy

[Flare]

Hey guyse. :D

I was wondering, when a theme is discontinued (for example, Adventurers, well, with the exception of the new Pharaoh's Quest, I'm talkin' real-deal Johnny Thunder stuff here), the mini-website along with it is eliminated. It's gone. Harray, Harray, no, it's all over! He's gone! *sob*

After that pitiful attempt at comedic melodrama, I have a question: where do the websites go? Do they pass on to some mystic afterlife? Are they stored somewhere, on servers at LEGO? Or are they just deleted?

Questions, questions. :P

My guess would be that they are deleted.

[Darth Jar Jar]

My guess would be that they are deleted.

But I went on the alpha team website last year....

[Stegoceras]

I'm not sure who is responsible for the websites but I'm pretty sure they are taken offline and then they are archived, maybe even deleted, depending on their policy.

[62Bricks]

LEGO certainly archives their old sites themselves, but removes them from the web as the site is updated and themes and sets are retired.

However there is a non-profit organization called the Internet Archive that attempts to archive all public websites. Their files for lego.com prior to 2000 is a little spotty - and I think the Adventurers theme was introduced in '98 or '99? - but you might poke around there and find at least parts of the older theme pages.

For example here is a page for the Adventurers Jungle theme from August of 2000. You can try clicking on the links just like a regular web page and you might find other theme sites, or you might hit a dead end. It's fun to look at the old sites, though.

Here is a list of all the versions of lego.com that have been archived by the Internet Archive since 1996.

Here is an archived copy of LEGO's 1996 web site - very interesting to look at! Remember that the worldwide web was still fairly new in 1996 and most of us were dialing in over the phone on 56K modems (or slower!) so the early site had small graphics and lots of text. Around 2000, LEGO started including a link to a "high-speed flash" version of the site.

[CP5670]

Yes, the Wayback Machine is the best way to find old versions of the site. However, their crawlers don't pick up everything, especially images and flash files.

This is actually the main reason I prefer TLG's old print catalogs over their internet advertising. The websites are not permanent and it's not easy to look at that content many years after the theme is gone. It's good we still at least have the S@H catalogs.

[Raphy]

Thanks everybody, this helped a lot!

Another question: Would they save the promo websites?

[Masked Builder]

Thanks everybody, this helped a lot!

Another question: Would they save the promo websites?

I don't think so. I think they just update them when they're released.

[The Yellow Brick]

I find it quite interesting looking at the past website versions .