About Site Atlas
Introducing Website Photography
Websites change all the time.
A company’s website is often the clearest public picture of what that organisation is doing, how it presents itself, what services it offers, and how it changes over time.
Site Atlas is built around a simple idea:
Website Photography — capturing useful views of websites and keeping a visual record as they evolve.
Instead of treating a website as something that only exists today, Site Atlas records how websites look at different points in time. These stored views create a visual history of companies, organisations and sectors.
Websites evolve. Site Atlas captures the changes.
Most directories are based on names, addresses, categories and links. Those things are useful, but they do not show what a company actually looked like online.
Site Atlas adds another layer.
It checks websites, follows links, takes screenshots, and stores changing views. This makes it possible to see not only whether a website still exists, but also how it has developed.
A company may redesign its homepage, change its branding, add new services, merge with another business, move into a different market, or disappear completely. Site Atlas helps record those changes visually.
Why screenshots matter
A screenshot can say things that a normal directory listing cannot.
It can show:
- how a company presents itself
- what services or products it is highlighting
- whether a website is active or neglected
- how branding and messaging have changed
- what a sector looked like at a particular time
For many organisations, their website is their public shop window. Site Atlas captures views of those shop windows over time.
This is not intended to replace the original websites. The purpose is to provide a visual reference, a record of change, and a better way to understand the online presence of companies and organisations.
From link checking to visual history
The original need was practical.
When running directories of companies, links have to be checked. Websites move, close, redirect, or change structure. A directory is only useful if its links still work.
Taking screenshots made link checking more meaningful. It showed not just whether a site responded, but what was actually there.
Over time, the screenshots themselves became valuable.
They created a visual archive — a way to look back at how companies and sectors have changed online.
That became the foundation of Site Atlas.
More than a list of links
There are billions of sitemaps.
But Site Atlas is different because it is not simply a list of pages. It is a growing visual atlas of websites.
It combines directory information, link checking, screenshots and history. The aim is to make websites easier to discover, compare and understand.
A normal link tells you where a website is.
A Site Atlas record helps show what it looked like, how it changed, and where it fits.
Why there are several related sites
Site Atlas is the central idea, but the websites it records belong to very different subjects.
Estate agents, property developers, builders, construction companies, international property businesses, theatres and other organisations cannot all sensibly sit in one single directory. The result would be too broad, too confusing, and less useful.
For that reason, the wider project is divided into subject-based sites.
For example:
Homm.co.uk focuses on estate agents, property developers, retirement housing and related property organisations.
1-2-3-4-5.com focuses on the UK construction and property-related business sector.
5-4-3-2-1.com provides an international property and realty directory.
SellingPoints.co.uk explores property descriptions and the features, brands, places and terms that appear in them.
GB0.co.uk is used for other sectors where the same screenshot and website-monitoring technology can be useful.
The sites are separate because the subjects are separate. Each one needs its own context, audience and structure.
The Site Atlas purpose
Site Atlas exists to make website change visible.
It records websites as public-facing snapshots, helps keep links useful, and builds a visual history of organisations as they develop online.
Websites are not static.
They evolve.
Site Atlas captures the changes.