How can you tell who created a web site?

That depends. Design firms often create web sites on behalf of others. If you're interested in finding out the team behind a corporate or professionally created site, look for a "credits" page. If you can't find any trace of the authors, try sending an email to the webmaster. If, however, you've landed on a random site, perhaps from a search engine results page, and you want to know who created or "owns" the page, you should check the URL. It's likely (but not certain) that a page that resides on the servers of, say, http://www.yale.edu/ is somehow under the auspices of Yale University. Be careful, however, in assuming that a page is "official" just because it lives on a specific server. Many schools and organizations provide space for the personal pages of their constituents. If all else fails, try "backtracking" the URL by removing the last file or directory name (e.g., http://www.yale.edu/nursing/admission.html becomes http://www.yale.edu/nursing/). Enter the shortened URL into your browser and you will often land on a higher-level page, which sometimes can offer insight as to the owner of the original web page.