Sometime last year, MakeUseOf featured an excellent list of disposable tools for the web. It covered a spread of useful disposable email accounts, phone numbers, login details, fake names, and file sharing tools.
Disposable services are incredibly useful when you just want a bit of anonymity online. Can’t trust a website that looks a little dodgy with your real email? Use a fake one which you can gain access to later.
Disposable services are also good for cases where you just need something to exist for a limited amount of time and not reside in cyberspace forever, for example files you want to share with your friend, or in this case ““ a webpage which expires after a certain timeframe. Below, I’ll show you how to create a disposable webpage in a matter of seconds.
Why would you want a disposable webpage?
The aptly named service is called DisposableWebPage and is completely free. What it does is that it creates an instant wiki for you to edit, share and perhaps collaborate with your friends. This also means you reap all the benefits of a wiki system with rich text editing and collaboration built directly into the system ““ plus you have version control so you can easily revert back to previous forms if something goes wrong.
These web pages can last up to 90 days or less, and can be very useful for event based discussions, for example, party or travel decisions ““ where it’s important to get everyone’s input but you don’t need to have the details stuck online after the event.
With this service, you don’t have to worry if all your friends use Facebook, Friendster, or whatever social networking service to organize and plan an event. Everything is on a single web page, accessible by all.
You can also put in photos, and even easily integrate sticky notes, and maps to make the page more dynamic.
Finally, you don’t have to worry about the site expiring without your knowledge. Every time you visit the page, a countdown timer to expiry is prominently displayed.
How to set up your own disposable page
What I really liked about it is that it’s pretty much quick and dirty. You don’t need to register in order to create a page, so your disposable web page can be set up in just a matter of clicks. To show you how easy it is, I’m going to walk you through making one for yourself.
Step 1: Go to DisposableWebPage, and click on the big red link, and name your page
Step 2: Your page is created! Now you can bookmark it right away, start editing it, change the timer, or send editor keys to your friends so they can edit this page as well.
Step 3: After you make the changes you want, send it to your friends so they can collaborate as well.
That’s all there is to it! Simple, and flexible for quick and dirty solutions where you need a web page which expires after a certain amount of time.
Do you use disposable tools? If so, tell us which ones you use in the comments!
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Well all the same you could just create a geocities page – write up some stuff, add noindex tags so it doesn’t get picked up by google – share the link with a friend, then when you’re done just delete the page.
These kind of disposable “one time use” services aren’t really all that necessary, I fail to see the utility of it, you may as well just send an e-mail if you have temporary information to give out.
I don’t see the point of this as well. Why not just create a site and delete it whenever necessary?
@Television & Ajay: Yes you could do what you described, but this is much faster because
1. You don’t have to register or fill up details for anything, just click and create.
2. You don’t even have to bother deleting it. It will handle that on its own.
I quite like this idea: no need to remember to discard debris. However, there are still a few kinks so I hope the developers are reading this because I can’t seem to find a way of reporting to them. I wanted to make a page to contain a short Shockwave video for a colleague. Unfortunately when I clicked on the browse button in the “Insert/edit embedded media dialog” I received something like “file browser callback: field_name: src, url: , type: media” with an ‘OK’ button.
Also found that placing an apostrophe in text results in “\’”. Multiple apostrophes result in an increase in the number of “\”. Appears to be a problem with the TinyMCE editor. Frustrating that there isn’t a way to report.
Privacy sites like PRivacy Center have been offering tools like this for a long time, pretty much anything you want regarding online anonymity and privacy
http://www.privacy.mx.tc
I have a pbwiki account. It lets you create pages inside it – and collaborate, with varying levels of editing control. this is great… is there is a temporary need, I create a page and send out the link for people, and they canb edit it to. I delete the page when done.
This is WAY better than email. Many times you need a “state of affairs” page… something that just shows the current state of things. for a party, if 2 people replied “I’ll bring paper plates” (they’re both single I guess) then you start trading emails to change one of their minds. With a page, you tell people to look there, edit it, and that’s that. everyone sees the current state of things. But this particular service looks like overkill.
wont something like archive.org save it?
Umm… ever heard of facebook groups and events?
Contrary to popular belief – not everyone has an account. I don’t have/want/need one, and YES I do have friends.
http://www.10minutemail.com, temporary random email address valid for 10 minutes (expandable). Useful when you subscribe to something that requires your email to send back a password or validation key.
Disposable sites are a great idea.
A lot of people don’t want to fool with setting up a geocities account so this is a great for quick and dirty pages.
One time readable text notes: http://sn.linkstore.ru
Wow I really didn’t know where this title was heading…Not a bad idea, however whats wrong with a blog set up under the fake email address and all…When your finished you can delete it at any time. You can also have any number of different authors writing on the blog…But who knows, this disposable website may become popular…Everything else does!!!
Great idea, but it has bugs. It will not work properly in Firefox3. Entered text is sometimes lost after clicking on Save. The emoticons do not work. As someone already mentioned, an apostrophe produces multiple slashes. Too bad there is no way to report these things. Other than that, it’s a neat idea for a quick and dirty site.
I think it’s a great idea. I already signed up for an account.
A google search for di
sposable websites turns up a stagger 1 million results.
Do these sites allow ads, e.g. Adsense?
If so, it could be a quick and easy way to make some money from a newsworthy event, without going to the trouble of setting up a blog. Thoughts?
I think the question should be “does Adsense allow these sites?”. You have to get Adsense to approve each site you go on. You just can’t slap the code everywhere you go.
So even if the sites are OK with the code, you have to make sure that Google is OK with it and they may not be, given that the site self-destructs after 90 days.
I guess these are useful for very limited use, but like nothing to write home about
I guess this is cool, the only problem is if you need to get info from it in the future its gone.
useful amazing stuff for the bloggers thanks.