A stormwater report vanished from the live public-works site after a CMS redesign and now returns 404. What should the analyst try next?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
A 404 is a locked front door, not a demolished house. Cache and archive copies often still hold the stormwater report the live CMS dropped. Guessing passwords or inventing a summary is how you fail the collection, not how you recover it.
Full Explanation
Live pages are only one state of a public URL. Search-engine caches and web-archive class sources can recover civic documents pulled after a redesign. A current 404 is not proof the report was never published and is not authorization to log into the CMS. Generated text without a source is not a substitute for the original filing; capture the archived URL, timestamp, and a screenshot if the copy is used in the report.