Back in 2016-17, I started kicking around ideas for a name and associated domain for what would become this perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. In so doing, I only checked for the availability of various domain names. One of my ideas was The Emu Café, but .com was taken (that of course would not stop me from taking .org a few years later). I thought of The New Leaf Journal and was surprised to find that both “thenewleafjournal” and “newleafjournal” were available for .com. It had not occurred to me to check if there had previously been a website under either domain. My friend, who was working with us on the project at the time, bought both on her own initiative, so that settled the name quandary.
A few years ago, I was looking for an older version of our home page for one reason or another in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The earliest capture I could find for this site (the home page, at least) was July 1, 2020, which was consistent with our April 27 launch date that same year. But I noticed a single capture before that date: January 11, 2016. That was certainly before the domain came into my, or our, possession, much less before I launched This New Leaf Journal. I clicked the January 11, 2016 Wayback Capture.
The capture was not of the previous thenewleafjournal.com, at least as a live website. Instead, it was a notice that the domain had expired 12 days before the capture, on December 30, 2015, and was set for cancellation. From the little robot logo, we can tell that the previous owner of the domain had hosted his or her thenewleafjournal.com with WordPress.com the service. While we use WordPress, we use the software and host it on our own chosen server. But all hope is not lost. The domain expiration notice noted that the blog would still be available at thenewleafjournal.wordpress.com. Is that site still live? Why yes it is!
The former The New Leaf Journal is, and apparently was, a very minimal website. It had two blog posts, First Step and New Beginnings, both of which were published on December 30, 2014, which may have coincided with my first play-through of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (that is neither here nor there, however). Both of the posts offered inspirational thoughts for the new year. First Step is prompted by a purported Martin Luther King quote about taking action to make positive changes in the new year (somewhat in line with some of my thoughts in An Essay on Productivity, Production, and Productive Leisure. New Beginnings is inspired by the struggles of people to keep New Year’s resolutions, but noting that “every single moment is a new beginning.” I was curious whether there had previously been more “content” on former The New Leaf Journal, but the earliest Wayback Machine capture of the WordPress.com version of the site (August 3, 2018) looks the same as the live 2026 version.
Out of curiosity, I decided to check whether there had previously been a newleafjournal.com. I also control that domain and use it as our email domain. Outside of email, it redirects to thenewleafjournal.com. Wayback Machine has just three captures prior to when we gained control of the domain, all from 2016 (Note: The 2019 capture predates my launching The New Leaf Journal but we already controlled both thenewleafjournal and newleafjournal domains). As lunch would have it, the January 10, 2016 capture of newleafjournal [dot] com went to a live website – sort of.
A “Coming soon” page with the tagline “Be kind to yourself.” This was a Squarespace-hosted website? How do I know? Let us see the next Wayback Machine capture from March 16, 2016.
Alas, what was “coming soon” was the expiration of the domain. That expiration ended up working out well for yours truly, for I am not sure if I would have gone ahead with The New Leaf Journal without being able to control both of the pertinent .com domains.
It is possible that there were earlier The New Leaf Journal or New Leaf Journal .com websites, but if there were, they were not captured by the Wayback Machine (or Archive Today, which I checked separately). My guess is that the prior owners of the domains had plans for them, but those plans went unrealized for one reason or another, and paying to renew a domain one will not use is not the best use of one’s money. Whatever the reason, the timing ended up working out very well for this The New Leaf Journal.
This was a fun little internet archaeology project to dig up information on our predecessors. Perhaps I will honor the legacy of former The New Leaf Journal this New Year’s Eve-eve with my own thoughts on making plans for the New Year.
