Waking up this morning the first thing that popped into my head was the question “Is my site alive?” Guessing there is no written criteria for a living website, I thought I would check the popular biological methods, and give those methods a little computer perspective.

Is My Site Alive?

Here are seven quick checks to see if my website is alive based on the biological definition of life.

Homeostasis

Being that my site is hosted on a computer, I think it’s safe to say it can manage itself. This particular site has several functions that are happening all the time to make sure it’s up and running, and appearing healthy. It has comment spam protection, login abuse protection, daily backups, and several cron jobs. The server that it’s hosted on can even kick on an extra fan if the CPU is getting to hot.

It’s alive so far!

Organization

There are many “cells” to this website making it more than a page. It’s a website, and it appears to be organized as one entity.

Still alive!

Metabolism

Admittedly, my site is not as good as converting donuts to energy as myself, but it does have a techy type of metabolism. By converting energy given to it by myself through posts, and through your comments the site grows. My energy can also be converted, and used to maintain homeostasis. I can approve spam, or take care of any problems it may have had while I was away. Human energy that is applied to the site is evident.

Still alive!

Growth

Just by writing this post the site grew a little. What if I wasn’t around to take care of it though? With your comments and the Webmaster Wiki it will continue to grow as well. At least for a little while.

I’m not dead yet!

Adaptation

I had a little trouble with this one at first, but then I found two good ones to support this. This site is built on WorPress, meaning I use a theme for its visible format. Right now my site is very two dimensional. If you haven’t noticed yet, many sites have been switching to three dimensional themes. One click of the button, and, whammo, my site has evolved (or at least changed).

The other method of adaptation was this sites actual life. When I first created it, I did it to support clients so they could get more information about me. I dropped this platform, though I still have contact information on the site, and it has “adapted” into a blog format.

Still very much alive!

Response to Stimuli

If you make a comment on this site, it will post it. If you spam it, hopefully it will block it. Yes, it is responsive, and in many ways.

Still alive!

Reproduction

Well this would be an asexual reproduction if it could occur, but how, why, or what could the site reproduce? I think it’s fair to say that this site could develop in a way that a second domain needed to be created to support it. My Webmaster Wiki could be its child. That site would then follow it’s own path.

I also considered my Twitter Toolbar I developed (and host on this site), but I am not really reproducing life in that case. The toolbar is more like an aggravated skunk. It came from the skunk, everyone knows there is a skunk around, but the smell is not alive.

So at this point I would say this site has the ability to reproduce, and yes, my site appears to be alive.

Are All Websites Alive?

Do all websites qualify as alive? Definitely not, but it does appear to be an almost expected attribute of a site now. Static, lifeless sites are boring. Here is your information sir…you might as well have handed me a rock with the data engraved on the side.

Possible definitions of Webs? Web 1.0 = Your site is dead (at least not alive). Web 2.0 = Alive. Web 3.0 = Alive, and is considered a higher life form. Maybe after that the Web will be defined as Web 3.1, 3.2, and so on. It’s just different levels of thinking life forms starting at 3.0.

Am I crazy? You tell me…Had fun writing this though!

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