Why is it common to come across long-deserted websites and forums on the Internet when both the domain and hosting require regular renewal?

The cost of renewing a domain is not very expensive, and you can easily find a registrar for only $5 per month. Many people are reluctant to let go of a beautiful domain name.

Similarly, the cost of hosting is not a barrier either. You can find free hosting or rely on the kindness of friends and acquaintances.

In fact, our company has its own hosting server dedicated specifically to friends of the host. As a result, we have around 30 websites "hanging" there, with half of them being abandoned, as you mentioned.

Sometimes, ideas for websites arise but there simply isn't enough time to bring them to life. People start creating a website, but then abandon it, leaving it hanging and causing concerns about potential risks online.

Forums often face a similar fate. Someone creates a forum with the intention of fostering communication and discussions, but then the intended audience scatters elsewhere. As a result, the forum ends up with only a few messages, and registration is usually closed. If registration is opened, bots quickly swarm in, flooding the forum with nonsensical content.

There's a program known as Crum, or something similar, that is every moderator's nightmare. This software effortlessly bypasses any captcha, mimics human behavior, and proceeds to flood the forum with tons of inappropriate content. It's as if the program asks itself a question, answers it, and starts generating irrelevant posts. The moderator then has the arduous task of sorting through all of it. I've had experience working as a moderator on a specialized forum, so I can definitely relate to what I'm saying.

Are server administrators worried about extending domains for their friends?

There is a service called "auto-renewal" provided by registrars that allows for extending the domain for 10 years in com, org, net, biz + zones (not sure how it works exactly).

So, there is a possibility for a website to exist for ten years without any intervention from the administrator, as long as they can rely on the hoster and a specific domain. However, most of these websites are destined to be deleted. This serves as an example of the "survivor's mistake."

Many hosting companies and registrars have a feature in their personal account that automatically renews services without notification or consent. Even if a user wants to cancel the auto-renewal, they often struggle to find access to the control panel. This leads to cases where users, due to the small amount involved, postpone the cancellation and end up forgetting about it.

Additionally, there are some hosters who offer free or very affordable hosting options. In exchange, they display banner ads and external links on the hosted websites. As long as the site generates traffic and displays these ads, it is allowed to remain active.

Furthermore, an old website that has been registered and filled with content for a long time, even if it is no longer regularly updated, can be a valuable source of SEO links and exchanges. The profit derived from selling these links can often exceed the cost of maintaining the site.

Lastly, I have personally encountered situations where a company's data was not properly included in the billing, resulting in the site continuing to hang on the hosting for free. This can happen when a studio rents servers and resells hosting services, but due to manager negligence, the site remains active until someone discovers the errors.

There are several reasons why you might come across long-deserted websites and forums on the Internet:

Automated Renewal: Often, domain registration and hosting services have automatic renewal features. The original owner might have set up an auto-renewal and forgotten about it or not bothered to turn it off, resulting in the site continuing to exist long after they've stopped actively managing or participating in it.

Retained for Posterity: Sometimes, the owners of websites and forums decide to retain them as they are for historical or sentimental reasons, even after they've stopped updating them or participating in them. They could consider these spaces as archives or time capsules of a particular period in internet history or their personal or company history.

Neglect/Forgetfulness: In some cases, the owners of these websites might have simply forgotten about their existence, especially if they've moved on to other projects or changed their contact details and are no longer receiving reminders about needing to renew their domains or hosting.

Financial Considerations: The cost of maintaining a domain name and minimal hosting can be relatively low, especially considering prices have generally decreased over time. Often, it can be worth it to the owner to continue paying these fees to keep the option of resurrecting the website or forum at a later date.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Sometimes, older websites and forums hold valuable SEO potential because they have numerous backlinks, which can be beneficial to search rankings. Thus, even after the site has become defunct, the owner or someone who has purchased the domain might keep it live to maintain these benefits.

Potential for Sale: Domain names may have value and can be sold at a later date. Owners might not be actively using or managing a site but will continue to renew their domain registration in order to maintain ownership of a potentially valuable domain that they can sell in the future.

Here are a few more aspects to consider:

Legal Reasons: Some websites need to be maintained for legal reasons. For example, a company may have dissolved, but legal stipulations might necessitate the continuous operation of the website for a specific number of years.

Data Hoarding: Some websites or forums might be sustained by people who believe in data preservation. They would prefer to spend money to keep a piece of the digital world intact, even if the site is not updated with new content.

Advertisement Revenue: Some websites, especially forums, generate ad revenue through traffic even if the content hasn't been updated in a long time. Evergreen content can continue to attract visitors and generate ad impressions.

Abandoned, but Not Forgotten Users: Some social networking or community websites might have fallen out of use by the original creators, but active users might continue to interact on them. In these cases, it's the user community that keeps the site alive.

Redirect Purpose: Some abandoned sites are used as redirects to more updated websites or used as landing pages for specific reasons.

Orphaned but Hosted: In instances of multi-site hosting, where multiple websites are hosted using a single plan, even if a website is no longer active, it will continue to exist as long as the overall hosting plan is active.

Certainly, the internet is a vast place, and you'll come across many abandoned websites and forums, each with their unique reasons for existence.

Many long-abandoned sites linger because their owners keep domains on auto-renew or cheap hosting plans running as digital tombstones, often forgotten but still live. Some devs or hobbyists stash legacy projects on low-cost VPS or shared hosting, paying peanuts just to keep the archive accessible.

Then there's the "squatter syndrome": domains held hostage for SEO juice or resale value, even if the site's dead. Lastly, some forums or sites run on legacy CMS or static files dumped on neglected servers - no fresh content, just ghost data eating bandwidth.