Marketing No Brainers

What I Learned From a Server Crash

August 22nd, 2006Domains & Web Hosting

A visit from Murphy

Sunday evening I found out that five of my web sites weren’t working. After a quick try to fix the problems at the web host (ex web host now :-)), I realized that they weren’t going to be any help at all. They are in Germany. It was the middle of the night there. Two days later they still haven’t called me back.

Most of my sites I host on my own server at Bizaddy.com, but for the sake of security, having links to my own sites from different IPs, etc., I had maintained a hosting account at 1and1 for a few years. I have even recommended them to people in the not so recent past. And probably for most people they are ok.

The problem was that I was in the middle of a JV giveaway event. The site for that was one of the ones on 1and1, and was totally dead. I needed to get it up in a hurry. Also the site I use for tracking my affiliate links was kaput on the same host.

So I did the intelligent thing and put them back up on my own server.

I was able to get the tracking site back up in practically no time, but the JV giveaway site gave me fits with the dns resolving. It didn’t help that I was trying to figure this out in the middle of the night. Finally I just gave up and went to bed.

With a fresh mind the next day I was able to get it all sorted out, and of the five sites, only one is totally gone. It was a new site, not backed up yet. I think I have most of the content saved here and there but I’m not sure where.

I learned (re-learned?) three things from this.

1. Customer support is more important than price.
2. Back up your sites, even your brand new ones.
3. Be your own customer, always.

Backing up your sites is elementary. Just do it as soon as you put a site up.

You’d think customer support wouldn’t be an issue with your own server. But it is. One of the reasons my Bizaddy site is such a no-brainer is that I get customer support 24-7, just as any customer does. Sometimes I need it just as much as a newbie. Or more!

Oh and I realize not all of you know Murphy, that guy who said, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” So be prepared.
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