Data Portability: Your Content Deserves an Exit Strategy

Why data portability matters for anyone who creates online — and practical steps to ensure your work outlives any platform.

Every platform promises permanence. None deliver it. From Geocities to Vine to Twitter's slow transformation, the history of the web is littered with content that vanished when a company changed direction.

The Portability Test

Ask yourself: if this platform shut down tomorrow, could I take my content with me? If the answer is no — or even "it would be difficult" — you have a portability problem.

Practical Steps

Keep canonical copies of everything you publish. Use open formats — markdown, plain text, standard image formats. Store them in version control. If your content lives in a database you don't control, export regularly.

The Indie Web Advantage

When your content lives on your own domain, in files you control, portability is built in. You can move hosts, change generators, redesign completely — and your content comes with you, intact.