In this paper we will consider the contact process in a very simple type of random environment that physicists call the random dilution model. We start with the contact process on a graph, here either $\mathbb{Z}^d$, a $d$-dimensional torus or an \ER graph, and then flip independent $(1-p)$ coins to delete edges, or delete vertices. Let $p^*$ be the threshold for percolation in the diluted graph. We will primarily be concerned with two phenomena. (i) The critical value for the contact process on the dliuted graph $λ_c(p)$ does not converge to $\infty$ as $p \downarrow p^*$. (ii) In contrast to the contact process on a homogeneous graph, the density of 1's starting from all sites occupied converges to 0 at a polynomial rate when $p<p^*$ (the ``Griffiths phase'') and like $c/(\log t)^a$ when $p=p^*$.