So who pays for running private web site

Factual Questions
1

Gee whiz, the internet sure has lotsa stuff to read!! But I still can’t figure out who pays the bills, and why.

For example, this site:

Some private person has put together a nice useful site that calculates the time of sunrise and sunset anywhere in the world. He copyrighted the site in 1997, and last updated it in 2001. There’s no biography, no commercial sponsor.

So who is paying for the computer space and internet hookup for a site like this?
I suppose the guy who created the site enjoyed it as a hobby, or did it for credit as part of a college course, or whatever. But the site is still running 5 years later. Doesn’t somebody, somewhere have to pay something? Will this site still be running say, for another decade , or till the end of the universe?

And on a larger scale–let’s talk (again!) about our beloved google ads: I don’t get how they work , in this age of pop-up ads and flash graphics.
When the internet was new, advertisers got really really excited about the idea of aiming ads at specific target groups. But it turned out that nobody clicked on sidebar ads, so they switched to musical flash graphics and “catch the monkey” games. Then that didnt work, so they switched to pop-up ads. Now we’re back to these minor, unobtrusive google ads. Are the click-through rates better now than they were in 1996?.

2

The site could just be living on his server. If so, there’s nothing to pay to anyone. He doesn’t have to pay anything other than the electricity to run the CPU and the cost of the domain name. If the site is hosted somewhere, as long as he pays his $20/year or whatever, it will stay there forever.

My co. has a Web site that I haven’t updated in 5 years. But it lives on until I either remove the files from the machine or shut down the server.

3

One possibility is that it is space that comes with someones internet service that the owner has never bothered doing anything better with. I get up to 7 web pages of 10 Mb each with my internet service, and haven’t used all 7 yet.

4

Web sites are cheap these days. Even the most professionally organized web site can be hosted and renewed for less than say $70 a year if someone wants to do it that way. If you really want a do-it-yourself type of thing and have the bandwidth already, it can be done in the <$30 a year range or maybe less.

So, someone is definitely paying for it. You have to renew domain names or they expire. Back in the early days of the WWW, this was quite expensive, now it is not. Someone, is paying out somewhere between <$15 and a few hundred dollars a year to keep this thing running.

If the only person that knows how to run this website dies then the website will be canceled. If he isn’t paying a company to host it, it could die at any given time if he neglects the server.

5

I’ve had a site for about 5 years and my total cost now is maybe about $100.

I added a small google ad a couple of months ago. The clickthru rate last month
was about one-half of one percent. I only added to ad did so to get some idea of how many page views I was getting.

The low click thru rate would possibly be higher if man or machine could determine
what the information I’m providing is used for. Not many accidental tourists would
know and I don’t explain the purpose at all. Most viewers come from sites who would have an interest in the information and know why I was providing it.

So the so’called targetted ads google is providing is almost never that, and often pretty humorous how their computer has interpreted what my site’s intent is.

6

You can do a “whois” on a site such as www.samspade.org to see who the domain name is registered to and who is hosting it.

7

I’m not sure if ‘whois’ always tells who is hosting it… but then, you can do a DNS, reverse-DNS sequence to find out who controls the IP address the website is at, and that’s generally a pretty good clue.

8

If you had examined the top of the page you would have known who was hosting the URL.
It is a public service provided by the Griffith Observatory. Times of sunrise/sunset are calculated years in advance.
The site is updated every few years to take account of any time zone changes, etc.

9

I don’t think that’s true. It looks like the site was merely a recipient of the “Star Award” from the Griffith Observatory. If I do a whois lookup on the OP’s domain, I get:



Registrant: 
Edwards, Steve 
Steve Edwards 
7761 E Camelback Rd 
Apt 240 
Scottsdale, AZ 85251 
US 

Domain Name: SUNRISESUNSET.COM 

Administrative Contact: 
Edwards, Steve steve@sunrisesunset.com 
Steve Edwards 
7761 E CAMELBACK RD 
APT 240 
SCOTTSDALE, AZ 85251 
US 
480-970-4201 

Technical Contact: 
Depot, Inc., Host hdtech@hostdepot.com 
Host Depot, Inc. 
12524 West Atlantic Blvd 
Coral Springs, FL 33071 
US 
(954) 340-3527 fax: (954) 340-3539 

Record expires on 20-Oct-2007. 
Record created on 21-Oct-1997. 
Bulk whois optout: N 
Database last updated on 3-Dec-2005 22:02:23 EST. 

Domain servers in listed order: 

NS1.HOSTDEPOT.COM 66.242.128.2 
NS2.HOSTDEPOT.COM 66.242.128.3

Looks like the hosting company is hostdepot.com, but the content and domain are owned by Steve Edwards.