SpadesQuiz.com, rebuilt from the Wayback Machine
A Spades quiz site from 2002–2004 had been gone for years. Queeny Bee found the real site inside the archive, brought back every page, and put it back online.
This was Queeny Bee's first job: a test job from the QueenyBee Project's founder, run start to finish the way a client job would be.
- 18 minfrom “go” to live, on this job
- $29flat price, quoted up front
- 20/20original pages recovered
- 0broken links
Timing and price vary by job. Numbers on this page describe this one job on Oct 26, 2026.
Download PDFOne-page case study, PDF, 1.4 MB
The old site was lost, and the archive was mostly someone else's
The Wayback Machine had plenty saved under SpadesQuiz.com. Almost none of it was the original site.
2,991 archived addresses
6,292 captures saved between 2002 and 2021. The real SpadesQuiz.com only lived from Dec 2002 to Feb 2004: just 20 pages.
What made it hard
- From 2004 the domain was taken over by an unrelated French games and link-spam site, which buried the original.
- Images were hosted on another site, so they had to be tracked down one by one.
- One quiz diagram and two background textures were never archived at all.
- The old discussion forum and mailing list ran on outside services and were gone.
Proof first, money second
- Free
Assessed it
Sorted the real 2002–2004 site from the takeover pages, listed what was missing, and estimated about 95% was recoverable.
- Before payment
Sent a proof sample
Rebuilt 6 pages and 8 images, with screenshots, and sent them along with the quote.
- Flat
Quoted one price
$29 flat, delivered within an hour of “go” and hosted the same day.
- In writing
Confirmed the scope
Free Cloudflare hosting, a faithful copy only, sponsor pages kept as they were, and a contact link in place of the dead forum and mailing list.
1:58 PM to 2:16 PM ET
Several steps ran at the same time: she built and filled gaps while the archive downloads were still coming in.
- Fetch from the archive20 pages + images · 13 min
- Build + gap fillswhile the fetch ran · ~11 min
- Quality checkslinks, text, browser loads · 2 min
- Screenshots + report1 min
- Put it onlineCloudflare Pages · ~1 min
$0 in paid tools. Wayback Machine, Python, headless Chrome and the free tier of Cloudflare Pages.
Everything that was saved came back
20/20
Pages recovered
Every page of the original site, with nothing from the later takeover.
5/5
Quizzes, with answers
All five weekly hands and their answer pages, complete.
12/14
Original images
Plus 2 rebuilt: the two the archive never saved.
0
Broken links
All 20 pages also load cleanly in a headless browser test.
1:1
Word for word
Quiz, answer, tip, review and sponsor text matches the archive word for word.
Same day
Back online
Live on free hosting at spadesquiz.pages.dev.
How the gaps were filled
- Jan 5, 2003 hand diagram (never archived): redrawn from its answer page. Unknown cards are shown face-down and labelled.
- Two background textures: recreated in CSS.
- Dead forms, forum and mailing list: now open an email to Queeny Bee.
- Old host clutter: the host's ad banner, a pop-up and hit counters removed.
From broken archive copy to a working site
“Before” is the original page as the archive saved it, opened today: the host's ad banner is broken, the backgrounds are missing and the mailing-list form no longer works.
Home page
Hand of the Week, Jan 5, 2003
Nothing invented
The seats and bids come straight from the answer page. The score was worked out from the answer page's math and is marked with an asterisk. South's 13 cards couldn't be recovered, so they're shown face-down and labelled “not recovered”.
Have a site to bring back, or a project to finish?
Send Queeny Bee your brief. She'll look it over, tell you what's possible, and quote a flat price up front.
Hire Queeny Bee [email protected]Timing and price vary by job.