Suggest HN: Good lifestyle type business | Hacker News Reader

Suggest HN: Good lifestyle type business

7 pointslarrys4 comments

This post is as a result of a customer request that we get quite frequently.

A small business owner with a static site wants to move hosting and doesn't have their website files and/or login to their old hosting account.

Typically in this case unless you can get the old files off archive.org (which surprisingly you can although pages are often missing) the customer is stuck.

1) I propose a service whereby the sites of major hosting providers are slurped and archived in there entirety (remember these are static) to aid in at least having a starting point to site recovery and moving.

2) Case #2 would be the customer has the files and/or access to the old hosting account and just needs handholding which the new host doesn't provide.

My feeling is that this (in addition to moving sites which are still active) would be something that hosts would welcome if they don't offer it themselves.

Mediatemple offers a similar service:

http://mediatemple.net/sitemover/

And where is the money in backing up sites from other hosts? I don't really see it.

The money comes from being a resource for anyone who needs to restore the site and use the archive as only one example. That "anyone" can be a service provided by the archive or access to the data can be sold to the person (tech or previous site owner) that wants to restore the site.

Even if for some legal reason the data couldn't be sold it could be offered in exchange for a donation.

This is not "archiving the entire web" it's archiving the type of sites (of size and purpose) that are most likely to need the service.

Look, I am probably an idiot, but I simply do not see how you would determine in advance who might want to pay you later for your upfront cost of keeping their data. But, hey, people do stupid shit all the time. I certainly do. I am just wondering out loud what the business model is here. I do not see a viable business here. But since I am not exactly rolling in dough, maybe that is just my own stupidity. Regardless, my suggestion is that there needs to be a payoff for doing this and if you are going to get someone else to seriously consider putting their time, money and effort into your off the cuff suggestion, it might help to point out the stupidly obvious means to rake in the dough with it.

Best of luck.

I'm with you on this one.

You're hoping that somebody 1) has a static website 2) wants to change hosting 3) doesn't have access to the source 4) just happens to call you

That's not a very solid customer.

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