About this archive
About this archive
This site is an independent historical archive, not the official Witton Albion website. This page explains where its material comes from, how each page was rebuilt and checked, and what was deliberately left out.
The Witton Albion Football Archive is an independent historical archive of Witton Albion football information. It is not the official website of Witton Albion Football Club, it is not run by the club or on its behalf, and nothing on it should be read as a statement from the club. Anyone looking for fixtures, tickets or news about the present-day team should go to the club's own official channels.
What this site is
In the 2000s this web address was the club's own website. Other football sites linked to it for years: governing-body club directories, league pages, supporters' sites and reference articles about players who once wore the red and white stripes. When the original site disappeared, those links stopped leading anywhere useful.
This archive puts something worthwhile back at the end of those links. It restores the informational pages of the old site, on the same addresses, as a reference work about the club's history: how Witton Albion were formed, where they have played, which leagues and cups they have won, and what happened in the seasons the old site documented in detail.
Where the material comes from
Nothing here was copied from a backup of the old site, because none exists. The starting point was the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which holds 952 captures of 413 different addresses on this domain, taken between 2007 and 2022.
Only some of those captures show the club's website. The genuine club pages date from 2007 to 2009, across three successive versions of the site: an early layout with pages under a content folder, a second with addresses such as abouttheclub.php?page=history, and a third built around content.php and a match console called WATV. About 150 addresses from that period held real club pages.
Later captures were set aside. They show, in turn, a domain-parking page, a bare directory listing, websites unconnected with football, a hosting-suspension notice, a notice that the domain registration had lapsed, and finally server error pages. None of that is football history, so none of it has been restored.
How each page was rebuilt
Every archived capture was examined and classified before anything was written. For each address the best legitimate capture was chosen on evidence (a club page title, football content, the site's own navigation and a date inside the club period) rather than simply taking the most recent one.
The pages were then written afresh. The original wording is not reproduced. What carries over are facts: names, dates, scores, attendances, line-ups, league positions and honours. Those facts were checked against independent published records, including the Football Club History Database, the Football Association, the Northern Premier League and contemporary reporting. Where the old site and an outside source disagree, the page gives both versions and says which is which. Where a detail could not be confirmed, it has been left out or marked as unconfirmed.
Each page ends with a panel headed "About this page". It gives the historical address, the dates between which the Internet Archive captured it, a link to the capture used as the main source, the other old addresses that lead to the same page, and the outside sources its facts were checked against.
What was left out, and why
- Photographs, the club crest and programme scans. Owning a web address does not confer rights over images that appeared on it. The archive uses no photographs and no club badge; its striped mark is original artwork in the club's colours.
- The photo galleries, the online shop and the member login. These were real parts of the old site, but their contents were not archived, and a club shop cannot honestly be recreated by anyone but the club. Those addresses return a "gone" response instead of an empty page.
- Match video. The old site carried highlights for many matches. The footage was never archived, so the old video addresses lead to a page describing the club's online match video service.
- Anything published on the domain after the club site closed. It had no connection with Witton Albion.
How the old addresses work
The old site used PHP addresses with query strings, and those are the addresses other sites link to. They are kept exactly as they were: a link to the old FA competition history page, for example, still opens a page about the club's FA Cup and FA Trophy record at the same address. Where the old site published the same page at several addresses over the years, one is treated as the main address and the others lead to it. The index of restored pages lists every page with its historical address.
Corrections
Football history gets better when people who were there correct it. If a date, a scoreline, a name or an attendance on this site is wrong, or if a detail marked as unconfirmed can be settled from a programme, a newspaper cutting or a league handbook, a correction with its source is welcome and will be credited on the page concerned.