How to make a history record of the website in Sitecore?

Question

I need to make a history of a Sitecore website. It should just be able to tell the editors when (from/to date) and what (content) have been on the website. I’m using Sitecore 8.2 update 2, and are using a combination of fields on the pages itself, rendering-parameters and shared data items.

I’m first idea is to append a pipeline right after the PublishItem.PerformAction, and if it is a page, then save it's full HTML. This will save the page whenever the rendering-parameters or the fields on the page are changed. But will not save the page if the shared data is changed. So when a shared data is published, then I will have to check all the pages, in order to see, if any of them are using the shared data being published.

The disadvantages of this approach, is that a lot have to be saved to the database, due to I’m saving all the HTML on the page.

My question is - are there an easier/better way of doing this?

Answer 1

At SYM2016 I saw a demo of the marketplace module that XCentium built called Vault. It sounds exactly like what you are looking for. Their site says it even has the ability to show you what it looked like using a History-Database.

https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/V/Vault_for_Sitecore.aspx

http://www.xcentium.com/digital-solutions/sitecore/vault

Answer 2

If you have a legal obligation to produce the physical appearance of any URL on your site at any point in the past, do not rely on Sitecore, or any dynamically-assembled archive. It may not be admissible. You want a hard-copy of each URL as it appeared on that day. You should look at some professional archive solutions designed to address this need specifically.

Over the past five years, I've seen this growing market's offerings mature as governments are increasingly regulating the legality and accessibility of web content.

As an example, this company offers full legal compliance solutions for digital assets: http://www.smarsh.com/