The IF community is committed to the preservation and continuity of its culture. That commitment is centered on the IF Archive, which has been hosting IF games, tools, and documents since 1992.

The Archive was originally an FTP site hosted in Germany. In 1999, I set up a mirror on the (new-fangled) World Wide Web. In 2001, the original FTP site shut down and ifarchive.org became the primary Archive host. The server machine has moved a couple of times since then, but with little change — except that it has continued to grow. Today, the file collection fills nearly nine gigabytes of disk space.

(I know, you can buy a larger thumb drive for ten bucks these days. But nine gigabytes would have been mind-boggling in 1992!)

Anyway, this year is the Archive’s 25th anniversary, and we are happy to announce its birthday present: adoption into the IFTF family.

It’s not so big a shock as you might think. I will continue to steer the Archive, along with pretty much the same group of people who have managed it to date. The new IFTF Archive committee comprises:

• Andrew Plotkin (chair)
• Doug Orleans (current submission filing and organizing)
• David Kinder (long-time submission filing and organizing)
• Paul Mazaitis (tech support)
• Stephen Granade (advisor, also archived IFComp games for 15 years)
• Jason McIntosh (server setup)

The biggest change is that the Archive will be supported by your IFTF donations, which are gratefully appreciated as always.

We’ve just begun the transition process. The domain registration for ifarchive.org has already been transferred to IFTF’s account. Over the next few weeks we’ll set up a new server on Linode (where iftechfoundation.org and ifcomp.org are already hosted). When we shift to the new server, everything should go on working seamlessly. You won’t even notice — except that the state-of-the-art golian ceraflamingo on the front page will be upgraded to something even more state-of-the-art. We haven’t decided what yet.

Special thanks to Mark Musante, who has taken care of the Archive’s hosting since 2014.