I’m wondering if anyone that’s running their own webservers/sites for faculty can shed some light on what they’re doing with those sites when faculty retire?  We’ve got a few faculty members that are approaching retirement and currently I’m hosting a few sites for them that are project sites hosting databases and such that are still actively used by others.  Further, some of these sites are mentioned in grants and publications I’m told.  I’m kind of in uncharted territory here in our department and we’re unsure of what the best way to deal with this is.

I have no problem continuing to host these things for a while but surely the department cannot continue hosting these sites indefinitely, right?  Some of these sites were created using specific framework versions and scripting languages that, if updated, could potentially (and probably) break the site if the code isn’t updated which presents problems since you don’t want to be running outdated vulnerable versions of these things.  Once the faculty who was sponsoring the site retires, who then becomes responsible for maintaining and running the site? 

Does the university have a policy or procedure for this type of thing?  If so, is policy different when the site was mentioned in a publication or grant?  Should the faculty be required to obtain their own domain name and hosting means that aren’t affiliated with the department upon retirement? Should the department provide a redirect to their new non departmental domain name and, if so, for how long?

Has anyone dealt with this or have any information, suggestions, or ideas?

Thanks,

Bill