“My website is down,” I hear you saying in a shaky voice, one error message away from a full-blown panic attack. “Will I lose my Google rankings? Will I lose my customers?”
Deep breath. Let it out slowly. Good. Now let me assure you, you’re not alone. Server issues affect us all—even Mark Zuckerberg—from time to time. This isn’t about how to prevent the server from going down; it’s about what you can do to be prepared for the inevitable. You don’t need to build the web equivalent of an underground bunker, but there are a few simple things you can do to protect yourself.
First and foremost, make sure your email and your website are not hosted on the same server. It seems obvious, I know. But when setting up a new website with dedicated email addresses, it’s too quick and easy to just consolidate and have them hosted together. Don’t do it. Take the time to keep them separate. That way, if your website goes down for whatever reason, your customers can reach you—and you can still reach them—via email. And if your email goes down, you still have your phone number plastered all over your website. (You do have your phone number plastered all over your website, right? Right?)
Second, consider the needs and nature of your business. If you provide a 24/7/365 service and experience a relatively high, consistent volume of traffic, resist the urge to save a few bucks every month by going with a shared plan. You need a dedicated server. When something bad goes down on a shared server, everyone is at risk. We’ve all heard of the site that gets hacked because the administrator’s password was something ridiculous like 12345. You don’t want to be anywhere near that site when it’s infecting every other user on the server.
Third, backup up your site on a regular basis. This is worth mentioning again: backup your site on a regular basis. Actually, you should backup your site every time you update it, because some hosts don’t automatically do it for you. Others will backup weekly on all servers except dedicated servers. Sick of that word yet? Backup? Make friends with it. It may become your best friend.
In fact, it might not be a bad idea to backup your site right now, if you can’t remember the last time you did.
If your website is down, don’t let it get you down.
Wondering what else you can do if your web server goes down? Give us a call at 603.529.8175 or fill out the contact form above. We’re suckers for good conversation, and we’d love to hear from you.
