EnTrends

Beware: Even in cyberspace, what
goes up, occasionally comes down.

What's that? Gravity in cyberspace?

That's right. Many entrepreneurs in
cyberspace are quickly re-learning
Newton's law of gravity. But this time
around it's not an apple falling, it's
their web site.

As a long-time veteran of cyberspace
I had nearly forgotten the
consequences of a fallen web site. I
had the occasion to experience this
nightmare and learn the valuable
lessons that accompany it.

If you think it can't happen to you,
think again. (Many of my woes were
avoidable, but I got sloppy. (I
promise to explain how you can learn
from my mistakes in a minute.)

You see, like many of you right now,
I thought I was safe. I went with one
of the larger web hosting companies.
They promised daily backups. They
promised 99% uptime - even
guaranteed it.

Promises are made to be broken...

My 1000+ page site, bizweb2000.com,
the source of 100% of my small
business income, crashed. When it is
down, my income stops. I now know
how cold and lonely cyberspace is
when your web site is dead. Not only
are these times lonely, lengthy
periods with a dead web site can be
very costly.

Take it from me. The grand tally from
the outage totaled well into
thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
Not a big deal for a large corporation,
but for a home-based business like
mine, it's a figure not to be taken
lightly.

But could I really have avoided it?

Maybe it was just a little bad luck?
After all, downtime comes with the

territory. Outages in cyberspace are
far from uncommon and there will
certainly be more in the future. If I
could have avoided any of this bad
fortune, I certainly would have,
right? But my own computer was
fine. The crash occurred at my web
hosting company, er, that is my
former hosting company, but I'll get
to that.

The fact is, I could have done
something before it was too late, but
I didn't!

I am to blame, just as much as
anyone else involved. And when
your web site crashes and stays
down for long periods of time, it may
be your fault too! Let me explain...

First I'll tell the tale of my little
nightmare, then, I'll reveal the steps
you can take to avoid such a
debacle.

Note: For the record, I will not reveal
the name of the hosting company
that brought me to my knees. If you
must know, drop me a line
personally. It is not my intention to
hurt their business, however badly
they wounded mine. I'll admit that it
was tempting, but malicious intent is
not my style and the purpose of this
article is to help you, not hurt them.

Anyway, it all started quite simply. I
noticed that I was not receiving my
normal volume of email one day, so I
sent myself a test message. Sure
enough, my bizweb2000 email
addresses were dead. I promptly
emailed support at my hosting
company and a day-long wait
ensued. After hours of silence, I
called them. "It should be working
now" they said. "It's not," I replied.
So they "took another look" and it
finally started working an hour or so
later. No message or call from them,
just silence. I chalked that up as just
a fluke. I was wrong.

A few weeks after that incident my
email addresses went dead again. In
addition, I had recently been notified

that my allowed 1 gig of transfer per
month had been surpassed and my
monthly fee would be tripled. Since I
was far from thrilled with the support
and I was now paying a premium
price, it made sense to look
elsewhere.

After much research, I finally located
a support-based web hosting
company where I would move my
site. What I did not do was transfer
my domain and web site to this new
host right away. I was going on
vacation for a week and figured I'd
do it when I got back. This was
mistake #1. Had I gone ahead and
transferred it before I left, I wouldn't
be writing this right now. But here I
am.

What happened next was THE
CRASH... and the scrambling...

At 8 am on Friday morning I fired up
my PC to pick up my email and
retrieve the orders from my secure
server. As my browser opened, it
stalled. "Cannot connect to
www.bizweb2000.com" it said.
Hmmm... I thought. I'll try it in a little
while.

Well, "a little while" turned into
repeated emails and phone calls to
my web hosting company. While I
did receive confirmation from
support that their servers were
indeed down, the next sentence
worried me a bit "We really don't
know what's wrong yet" the support
specialist wrote.

With that, I emailed the president of
the company and got out of my
office and went for a drive. I couldn't
do much and the stress was building.
I figured I'd be better off not thinking
about it. (That was Mistake #2)

Upon returning at 6:30pm, I went
directly to my PC and jumped online.
Site still down.

I was able to retrieve my email and
there were messages from support
and the president. They came in a
2:40.