Last week my entire online business was brought to it’s knees by my Internet Service Provider, Zen Internet.
I’ve used them for years and until last week they’ve provided excellent service and support — but that all changed on Thursday. Without any warning, their server’s broke, and almost every single one of my product sites disappeared, along with this blog (which is the hub of my business these days).
As you can see it’s all back this afternoon, but I’ve learnt (and also been reminded of) some extremely valuable lessons as a result of all this.
Here they are for your benefit also.
Please don’t make the same mistakes as me! If any part of your business benefits from (or even relies on) the Internet, take heed of the following.
1. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
My main mistake was to have all my web sites (my blog and my standalone product sites) hosted with the same Internet Service Provider.
I’m already in the process of spreading the hosting of my product web sites across different Internet Service Providers.
(That way if one of them ever screws up like Zen did you’ll still have a large percentage of your online business operational.)
2. We’ve all heard it time and time again … make regular backups.
Luckily I did have full backups of all my sites — I learnt that lesson the hard way a few years ago, but I know a lot of people won’t be backing up critical online data.
If any of your web sites capture data (like sales order and/or customer opt-ins) and stores it in an online database, make sure they’re being backed up regularly.
If you can backup your entire web sites, including all the pages, text, graphics and databases then you can quickly restore whenever necessary.
But there is a very important caveat…
3. Register your domain names with a different ISP (from the one who hosts your web site).
This was my main mistake.
If I had registered the domain name “EdRivis.com” with a different ISP, then I could have simply logged into the other ISP’s control panel and ‘pointed’ the domain name to a different Internet Service Provider’s web space (and restored my backup there).
I could have been up and running in less than a day after Zen broke down.
As it was, the domain name “EdRivis.com” was registered and is managed by Zen Internet. I’ve been more or less powerless while they were broken down..
ALWAYS register your domain name on a different ISP from the one who hosts your web sites.
(Ironically all of my home-study programmes show how to do that — but www.EdRivis.com was registered BEFORE I learnt to do that. Ouch. I’m in the process of moving it today… wish I’d done that a while ago before this happened!)
4. Planning for Catastrophic Failure.
Experts predict that one day the Internet will simply fall over… that it will be unable to bear the level of traffic/data and will collapse.
I don’t know how much chance there is of that happening, but if it does happens… will you remain in business?
The answer depends on whether you have downloaded all your customer and sales-lead details and store it offline… and if that information includes postal addresses.
Before I got into the Internet and web marketing I used to write database software for a living, so ALL of my customer data is stored in an offline database system. Is yours?
I hope this list helps you avoid a week like I just had.
-Ed.
February 25th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Welcome back.
Ed, I suggest you look at GoDaddy for international TLDs and Heart Internet of .uk TLDs – this a cost effective way of splitting your domains out from your hosting – especially if you have lots of domains.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Hi Ed
Welcome back
Must have been a few very frustrating days for you. If my email server or webserver has any downtime, the ‘webwizard’ on the other side always knows about it straight away – I’ll make sure of that!
(And then it comes in handy to have a non-company email address available which I only use for these kind of events – gmail and hotmail both have came to my ‘rescue’ before).
Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
February 25th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Hello Ed,
it’s great to see your site is up and running again.
Yet another important lesson learned.
Raymond
February 25th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I read only the headlines.
You are either speaking to people that have been converted or people that ‘KNOW’ you are a daft git.
I worked in consulting firms that delivered call centers, more than one. My last employer (M$FT) lost one million dollars an hour when the center went down and I was on line more than once making things happen.
Was there a DR plan? Noooooooooooooo.
Did I develop a process as a ‘just in case’? Yes
Was if followed for more than 8 months? Huh? who is this guy anyway?
Recovery? Hmmm, that guy must be talking about when I didn’t fall on the slopes.
Disaster, Hmmm, I saw those films where the earth stood still.
Me? Hmmm, must be talking about himself.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Oh how I feel for you. I’ve been hosting websites for almost 10 years and I’ve never had as much problem as I had in Dec and Jan for my blog.
I feel your pain.
-R
February 25th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Hi Ed,
Good to see you back! I got your last e-mail saying the site was down – and tried a few time since then and it was gone.
But good to see you up and running again!
I agree with the points you have made – you always need to have a back-up both of your site(s) and where you will relocate should your hosting provider “disappear”.
I’ve learned my lessons the hard way – from the days of not considering running spyware stoppers or anti-virus on my PC to not doing anything until I’m sure they are current.
I also regularly back-up my sites and keep them in a safe location.
Can I add a shamless plug? I’ve put out a free guide to Backing Up Your Website with cPanel over at my site – could you share this (even in comment form) with your readers?
It is a free download. No strings attached – no e-mail required, no registration — nothing. I don’t even track the IP where you downloaded from.
You can download the document from http://www.oibo.org/download or directly at http://www.oibo.org/?dl_id=1
Thanks Ed!
Regards,
Mohamed
February 26th, 2008 at 3:29 am
I am sorry to hear about your experience Ed. This is a timely reminder. I had not thought much about the concept of registering the domain name with another company, but even that makes sense from what you have said.
I wonder though what would happen if you have your sites hosted on ISP-A & B and domain registered on ISP-C. What happens if ISP-C goes down?
Anyway, it is good to see you back online.
Brendan.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Definitely don’t use GODADDY. From what I’ve heard, if you’re accused of spam for any reason, they’ll lock down your DNS without warning and charge you hundreds of dollars to resolve the problem.
Search for GODADDY $199 to find examples.
http://digg.com/tech_news/GoDaddy_Blackmailing_Their_Customers_for_$199_
February 28th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Hi Ed,
Our former web host was hacked last week and all our sites defaced. They made a freakin’ mess of things; both the hackers and the webhost.
So, oh how I can relate! Great tips here and I’m going to link to this from our blog right now. And get started to add in the things that I missed…
Thanks,
Mark
March 2nd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Wow! Experience is a great teacher. I’m now considering this for other reasons. But this helps to swing it.
Kenneth