In the never ending process of updating my railroad links directory, I've discovered that the San Francisco Cable Car Museum website is now diverting to an ad filled junk page.

http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/

Anyone have any more info? Is the museum still open? Do they have a new URL?

This seems to be a recent development, as it's the first time I've logged the error.

I've seen this before with other websites. This usually happens when the organization has "rented" space from a web server vendor for the hosting of their website. When the lease is terminated or not renewed in time, the URL "expires" and the actual website disappears, replaced with a generic page filled with adds and such.

Yep, I get that part, and deal with it all of the time. In this case, I think the museum is still around, so either they switched or forgot to renew their domain name?

Two things constantly amaze me on tourist train websites.

1) Railroads change their URL, some on a fairly frequent basis. Every time you do that, you break every single link that has been created to your operation. Some will not get updated for YEARS. Some will never get updated. Do NOT change your URL unless you have a very compelling reason.

2) I still see websites that do not specify where the railroad is located. I found a depot museum that was the worst I've ever seen. "Our depot is located on Main Street, 1/2 mile past Route 47" (not the actual roads, but you get the idea). Not only did it not say what state, it didn't even say what TOWN! I tried to write them and suggest including that handy info, but there was no contact info of any type on the page either. Ugh!

It's the world wide web. Your museum's location, including state and country, should be obvious. Contact info of some sort should be easy to find.

Found this mystery today:
Take this is spectacular 45-minute trip....
Trains leave every 40 minutes...

The trip takes 45 minutes but they leave every 40? How do they do that? Time travel? Possibly two trains, but I don't think they run two steamers every day, if it all. Typo is the easy explanation, so this one is more humorous than critical.

Not having your location be clear is far more critical.

Even the San Francisco Muni's (now the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) webpage on riding the cable cars has a link to the non-existing website.

A search of the SF Muni website indicated that there was a group called "Friends of the Cable Car Museum" that was involved with the museum in the power house. Internet searches for that organization gets one back to the dead address.

If you are interested in the cable cars:
The Market Street Railway has information about the cable cars as well as the F-line cars and its own museum near the ferry building.

Whois says the domain is good until 6/17/14. Probably an issue with their host.

Here's another "don't do that" for websites:

I thought I'd drop him an e-mail, "Hey, do you know your website isn't working?"
The e-mail address from the WhoIs is :register@cablecarmuseum.org

D'oh! If your website isn't working, you can't get e-mail via your website to tell you it's not working. Put an alternate e-mail as one of the contact points....

If you want to pursue this, I would suggest contacting the Market Street Railway group, they may know people involved with the SF Cable Car Museum.

-Hudson

Good Morning,

I sent two of the board members of the "Friends" an e mail last night about this issue.

Karl J.

That's why I always bang the drum about two things.

#1 - pre-pay your domain registration fee ($10-35/year) many years in advance. 10 is the limit, and every 2-3 years, pay it out to the limit. Because your domain registration is your internet identity, and thus precious and irreplaceable, but is also very cheap and simple.

#2. Separate your domain registration from your web hosting. Web hosting is a commodity, disposable and easily replaced. But it is also rather expensive ($10-100 a MONTH) and is likely to have a financial malfunction. (typically, auto-bill credit card expires.) When that happens, your web hoster WILL hold your domain hostage if it is with them.

Swapping web hosters is a simple matter of going to your domain registrar and changing one parameter, "DNS Servers", to your new web hoster. The web hoster will give you the value to put in.

These practices are not weird or controversial. If you'll look, you'll see that it's standard practice among professionals. This is why.

The irony is that lots of people including some of your members already pay for web hosting plans which accommodate more than 1 domain. It's entirely possible to coat-tail on their web hosting plan for free. Why pay hard money for something that's free? If anything goes wrong, then switch your web hosting somewhere else. Easy peasy.


IME the #1 reason that happens is my #1 reason above. People treat domain registrations like magazine subscriptions. They think they can just renew anytime with no loss. In fact, domains are real estate and domain registration is property tax. You lose your domain if you don't pay the "tax".

Those links you mention have commercial value. For that reason, "developers" automatically scan public data looking for domains of value. They figure out down to the second when the domain expires, and immediately register it for $9/year bulk rate. Their business model is
1) ransom it back to you for a great deal more than $9
2) Put advertisements in front of the eyeballs coming to your site via those links. At a penny a visitor, 900 visits pays for the year's registration.
3) Use your site's reputation to trick Google into ranking their other websites higher. This is called PageRank or "link juice".
4) Spyware, phishing and other evil.

Of course this kills your marketing efforts and costs you thousands, but the bad guy don't care.

You can "sort of" renew for 100 years (!) and at only $999, it's a pretty good rate per year. Overkill for most, but if your a really big operation and want to never have to worry about it again, go for it! Netsol basically takes your money and does the "renew for as long as possible every year" thing for you.

Of course 100 years from now, it will be like having a vanity telegraph ID and they'll be using 4 dimensional holo deck coordinates, but you can effectively "set it and forget it" for the next 100 years.

http://www.networksolutions.com/domain- ... r-term.jsp

No, I'm interested in the link, or more accurately whether or not it's still alive. I run a sort of "google for train websites" featuring thousands of hand picked links relating to railroads.

In my own version of "painting the Golden Gate Bridge", I also constantly check to be sure they're still valid and online.

Well, let's see... a $1000 endowment will reliably yield $40/year in perpetuity and rise with inflation, and that'll buy you 1 domain at Verisign's rates. They ought to give it to you forever for that price. LOL that would only take $300 at the places I get domains.

But whatever... $1000 is cheap compared to the business cost of losing your domain name even once in that time.


Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. I presume that 100 years hence we will still be networking computers in some capacity or other, and still using names because IP addresses aren't getting LESS awkward. (seen IPv6?) Face it, an embarrassing number of the current internet standards are going to become the "Roman horse cart" of the 22nd century.

Heck, we'll be lucky if Starfleet isn't running Windows XP.

Where are you getting domains for $3 per year? Heck, I though GoDaddy was good with $9 per year!



Exactly! It doesn't make sense for a small museum, but if you're a million dollar company, it's a pretty good option.



True, but I suspect things will change. The first, and most obvious, change is to allow IP addresses to use both letters and numbers. Or even increase it past the current 255 limit.

But that's really not the question. The thing you're betting on is whether or not "Network Solutions" will still be around in 90 years. If so, will they do what they said they would? Also, will $10 per year seem cheap, or will it be like the first cell phone plans that now seem outrageously expensive?

I meant that a $300 endowment would pay 4% ($12) a year forever, and that would cover the cost of a domain reg.



10 years out ($90) makes sense for everybody with a future.


You could say that. IPv4 had 4 billion addresses for the world. IPv6 is 4 times larger. By that I mean, your PC can have 4 billion for its internal use. You can have 4 billion PCs in your house. Your town can have 4 billion houses. And there can be 4 billion towns.

I think they mean to not ever do this again :)

When consumers ask me what all this means to them, I say: ""Comcast is going to make you replace your cable modem."

Ok, well then, where are you getting 4% interest on $300?!? LOL! The interest my bank pays hasn't even cracked 0.4% in years.

Insured Bank Certificates of Deposits are paying 3.35%, but only for 10 or 15 years.