What a commissioned archive is
What the studio builds, who commissions it, and what to expect before you read anything else.
A commissioned archive is a permanent, private web archive documenting one person's service life. It is built once, to order, for the family that commissions it.
It is not something you assemble yourself. There is no editor to learn, no blank canvas, no theme to choose. You have a conversation, you hand over what you have, and the studio builds it.
Who commissions it, and who it is about
Usually two different people.
The person commissioning the archive is most often a spouse or an adult child. The honoree — the person whose service the archive documents — may be alive and involved, alive and unaware, or gone.
Every arrangement described on this site is written with that split in mind. Where a decision belongs to the honoree rather than to the person paying, the page says so plainly.
What you end up with
- A private address of your own, on a subdomain the studio controls and maintains
- Pages built around the actual work — the rating or designator, the equipment, the watch, the deployments, the things that were true of that job and no other
- A guest wall where shipmates and family add what they remember
- A written record of how the archive was made, and of anything that could not be verified
What it is not
The studio builds one thing and does it thoroughly. Knowing what falls outside that saves everyone a difficult conversation later.
- Not a subscription site builder, and not a product you configure
- Not a public page. Archives are private by default and stay that way unless you decide otherwise
- Not a service that verifies or certifies anyone's record. The studio documents what you furnish and attest to
- Not a place for anything a family has not agreed to put there