Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting

Posted by malchow on Friday July 13, 2018 @11:46AM
from the ask-hn dept.

Here’s a question for you brilliant folks. Suppose you are at the end of a spectacular career — a writer, an engineer, a CEO, whatever. And that you’ve created a simple static site that showcases your life’s work. Mostly HTML/CSS/PNGs. Maybe some downloadable files.

Suppose further that you have no kids.

You’d like to get this site hosted on a custom domain. You want it to be available as far into the future as possible. Money is not really a limitation. You can prepay. In fact, you want to prepay.

How would you go about setting up a simple HTML site to last far into the future? Which vendors would you use? What extra layers/protections would you build in?

Would you select the optimal DNS/registrar and host? Or would you select one vendor for all three functions?

( 7 comments | 9 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting by demygale on Friday July 13, 2018 @01:42PM (#17525011)

I’ll give a non-technical answer: set up a legal trust. This is the typical way a person has their wishes carried out after their death.

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Re:Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting by ryanmercer on Friday July 13, 2018 @12:17PM (#17524231)

https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/hosting-your-website-aft...

Seems to be a decent read on the subject, it even shows at least one service (I just scanned it) that promised to do this then went belly up.

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Re:Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting by kennxfl on Friday July 13, 2018 @03:37PM (#17526009)

The best way is to set up a trust. Domains and hosting have a maximum period before renewal longest being 20 years. A trust ensures the renewals are completed. One legitimate vendor e.g. Google, would be the best option.

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Re:Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting by cimmanom on Friday July 13, 2018 @05:30PM (#17526877)

What's the goal? How long term is long-term? (A couple decades? A couple centuries? A couple millennia?)

For the really long term, printing something and getting it into some major archives (library of congress, etc) may be your best bet to persist information.

For somewhat long term, perhaps archive.org or another organization with a related mission might be part of the strategy?

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Re:Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting by lioeters on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @06:51PM (#17554214)

I had a similar idea of an "eternal bit" - to break the problem down, how much would it cost to host a bit for the next X centuries? Not sure if there's a realistic or practical solution.

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Re:Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting by 87 on Friday July 13, 2018 @04:33PM (#17526447)

I'd use ipfs as the authoritative storage. Some scripts triggering archiving on the major internet archives.

You could, say, buy 3 tlds for the same name and have different strategies for each.

If money really isn't a problem you could put the data on the bitcoin blockchain.

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Re:Ask HN: Prepaid long-term web hosting by mabynogy on Sunday July 15, 2018 @09:39PM (#17538170)

I know ramnode and ovh accept prepayment (maybe more than one year for ramnode).

The simplest is to make a static website, put it on GitHub pages, and make your domain point to that.

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