WordPress it is not only a CMS or a platform for managing the publication of contents on the Web but it is also a commercial project that offers hosting services for any type of business. Today, the initiative called The 100-years Plan caused a sensation, a new subscription plan which, for the modest sum of 38,000 US dollars, offers users a guarantee of maintaining their website online per leg 100 years.
It may sound like an April Fool’s joke but it’s not at all. WordPress offers an “unprecedented” solution that integrates, in a single package, a domain name with century-long recordcontent backup on geographically distributed data centers, unlimited bandwidth, a series of guarantees in terms of security and service availability, dedicated and personalized support.
The Internet domain registrations they generally have a 10-year limit. With the new dot, WordPress pledges to register and host domain and website for 100 years. A truly ambitious promise if you think that WordPress has been around for 20 years and that in a century things can change radically in the IT world.
Are we sure WordPress will exist in 100 years? Who will manage the company? And are we sure that in a century the Web as we know it today will be accessible and usable in the same way?
Because WordPress features the 100-year subscription plan
Either way, WordPress features the 100-year subscription plan as a useful initiative for families who wish to preserve their digital assets (stories, photos, sounds and videos that make up their history) for generations to come; for business and project creators who want to protect and document the past, present and future; for individual users looking for a stable, flexible and personalized “online home”, able to adapt to anyone change will bring the future of technology.
In short, WordPress is betting on the “goodness” of its offer, although it appears absolutely unconventional and almost impossible. The company, now headed by CEO Matt Mullenweg, explains that it uses special protocols to ascertain the domain ownership and be in a position to transfer the same to other authorized subjects (for example to the heirs) when necessary.
The idea of a company that could last at least 100 years was expressed by the founder of EvernotePhil Libin, who however resigned as CEO in 2015. The Europen Bending Spoons then acquired Evernote in 2022.
Le alternative al The 100-years Plan
On paper, the idea launched by WordPress is also good because it intercepts the desire to leave a historical memory of what people have done in a lifetime. It is certainly something valuable and it is the concept that has led to the birth of projects such as the Internet Archive or Archive.org. However, it is the terms of WordPress offering that are not convincing.
The 100-years Plan an initiative for the few appears today (the payment is only one) which will probably only be accessed by those who have significant financial resources and can bear the risk of such an investment. Perhaps, a good cost-free alternative is to create a encrypted backup of your data on multiple cloud platforms and then share the information with your loved ones to access it. Better if you use services that support it WORM technology that is to say Write Once Read Many: in this way the written data cannot be modified or deleted, even inadvertently, for the period of time indicated.