Use case · Media

The media outlet to freeze in read-only

Eight years of publishing, twelve hundred articles, four million cumulative visits, dozens of authors. You stop publishing — but you do not want to erase or let the site go dark by expiry. The scenario of a media outlet to freeze in read-only.

The setting

Your outlet has published for eight years. An editorial blog to begin with, it became a thematic review with thirty or so regular contributors, an editorial committee, a weekly newsletter, documented in-depth pieces. You have piled up twelve hundred articles, hundreds of thousands of unique readers, source relationships nobody else has built. The publishing entity closes — by fatigue, by team career choice, by the loss of a viable model.

You do not want the site to disappear, though. Articles get cited, inbound links exist, the archive is useful to peers and to newcomers in the field. The question becomes: how do you keep this archive online without restarting the editorial machinery, which is no longer sustainable?

The operational answer is the static migration. The site keeps existing but without a CMS, without a database, without ongoing moderation, without a newsletter. Articles remain indexable, existing comments stay visible, the internal search engine becomes a static index. Hosting cost drops to a few euros per month — and the site, even frozen, remains useful for years.

A media outlet that stops publishing does not become useless. It becomes a library. Provided there is a frame so it stays accessible, properly attributed and legally defensible.
  • 8 years of publishing
  • 1,200 articles published
  • ~50 GB of media archives
  • 4 M cumulative visits

What is at stake

  • The editorial content. Twelve hundred articles, some of which still serve as references in their field. Plain disappearance breaks the inbound links you have accumulated (institutional sites, academic citations, other media) and impoverishes the web for future newcomers.
  • Author rights. Depending on the contracts signed with each author (French Intellectual Property Code art. L. 131-3), assignment can be partial: you have the right to publish online, not necessarily to transfer the site to a third party. The switch to read-only, however, is generally covered.
  • Moderated comments. Regarding the retention period of user data, comments fall under the editorial responsibility that outlives cessation. Removing them alters the archive; keeping them implies maintaining them accessible to GDPR rights of commenters.
  • Author and contributor accounts. About thirty authors with personal areas, statistics, notifications. The closure of those areas must be announced. Individual exports (of their own articles) should be offered upstream.
  • The editorial inbox. For years, sources keep pitching, readers correct, lawyers request a right of reply. Without email continuity in inbound-only mode, those messages disappear — including those that would open a residual editorial risk.

How Archivum operates

  1. 1

    Scoping the case

    Editorial audit (CMS, database, plugins, media volume), inventory of author contracts, intended retention duration, GDPR status of user accounts. Detailed quote, then a template contract adapted to editorial media.

  2. 2

    Regeneration as static HTML

    The whole site — articles, dossiers, media, index pages, author pages — is converted to static HTML. Canonical URLs are kept (SEO preservation). Active features (comments, subscriptions, author areas) are cleanly disabled with visible cues that the site is no longer active.

  3. 3

    Migration to Scaleway + Cloudflare

    The static site is deployed on sovereign French object storage (Scaleway) behind Cloudflare. Hosting cost is marginal. Performance is high (CDN, long cache). See site continuity.

  4. 4

    Editorial email taken over

    editorial@, contact@ are taken over in inbound-only mode. Granted former officers consult incoming mail — sources, right-of-reply requests, reports — via a logged register.

  5. 5

    Notice to authors and users

    Authors under contract receive a notice explaining the switch to read-only, their right to retrieve their articles, and the preservation of authorship credit on the archived site. User accounts are notified of the end of service with a GDPR export offer.

  6. 6

    Conservation and end-of-period arbitration

    The contract sets a typically long archive duration (10 to 20 years for the editorial archive). Former officers (or their successors) decide at term between extension, deletion or transfer — see end-of-period arbitration.

Ten years on

The former officers named in the contract — or their successors — decide collegially.

Extension

A new period. For a media outlet of historical value, extension is often the default scenario — the archive grows in value over time.

Deletion

Secure destruction, certificate issued. A rare choice for a media outlet: in practice it amounts to erasing a chapter of the field's history.

How much it costs

For a mid-sized media outlet — eight years, 1,200 articles, ~50 GB of media, two editorial mailboxes — static hosting alone costs a few tens of euros per month. With archiving contract and email continuity, over five years, the order of magnitude is a few thousand euros per year. Media weight (videos, podcasts, high-resolution photos) drives more cost than article count. The final price is set in a quote after scoping.

Scope your case

The most efficient path is to talk for an hour before the last published piece. We audit your editorial stack, we validate a perimeter, you walk away with a scoped quote and a migration calendar aligned with your final editorial deadline.

Book a scoping call See other cases