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Dodging The Fail Whale: A Downtime Survival Guide

DODGING THE FAIL WHALE + DOWNTIME SURVIVAL GUIDE AHOY! i Did you know? ---- The first documented internet DoS-style attack occured during the week of February 7, 2000, when "mafiaboy," a 15-year-old Canadian hacker, Let's be honest. Website downtime can in- furiate us. And according to some, downtime can do much worse. It can affect user confidence, loy- alty and ultimately eat into our bottom line. How can we dodge the fail whale? That's the question of the hour. While we answer it, we might also orchestrated a series of DoS attacks against several e-commerce sites, including Amazon.com and eBay.com. engage in a bit of swashbuckling. Arrr! What is downtime? Downtime is when a particular application (like a website), cannot be accessed by its users. Even the big kids are plagued with downtime DOWNTIME OF POPULAR WEBSITES 2007 data. Top 20 websites determined by Alexa.com. Websites are listed in descending order of popularity. Yahoo.com (no downtime) Google (downtime: 7 min.) Myspace.com (1 hour) MSN.com (2 hours, 45 min.) Ebay.com (6 min.) Youtube.com (4 hours, 44 min.) Facebook.com (25 min.) Wikipedia.org (2 hours, 23 min.) Craigslist.org (1 hour, 9 min.) Live.com (1 hour, 48 min.) Amazon.com (21 min.) Blogger.com (4 hours, 47 min.) Go.com (8 min.) AOL.com (3 min.) Microsoft.com (13 min.) CNN.com (22 min.) Comcast.net (3 min.) IMDB.com (29 min.) Flickr.com (30 min.) Photobucket.com (1 hour, 23 min.) CAUSES/MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME CAUSES OF DOWNTIME Planned Downtime Disasters Component Failures Operator Error or Malicious Users EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: Upgrades for hardware components, firmware, drivers, operating system, and software applications. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, storms, etc. Accidental or Faulty hardware components, software defects, programming errors, viruses, file corruption, etc. intentional file deletion, unskilled operation, or experimentation. Hackers/malicious users. The internet A user The hosting server MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME Hijacked Pages (malicious content) Dead Pages (no loading at all) HTTP Errors Slow Load Times Hard Downtime (when a website is completely unavailable to its users) Soft Downtime (websites that merely exhibit poor performance) DOWNTIME CAN AFFECT ... 24 PROFITABILITY CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Amazon.com's net revenue for 2007 was $14.8 billion, or (if spread evenly over time) about $29,000 per minute. A large fraction of Amazon's revenue comes from online sales. When you website goes down, the typical consumer has no qualms about going to another site to buy In June of 2007 Amazon.com crashed for a period of about 2 hours, presenting users with cryptic HTTP messages. This single outage cost Amazon an estimated .. the item they're after. Not only will downtime affect sales, it will also impact customer satisfaction and $3.48 MILLION loyalty. If consumers anticipate problems every time they visit your website, they'll be less likely to trust their hard-earned cash with you. and existing! POTENTIAL INVESTORS SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS If your website experiences a technical glitch (planned or otherwise) when an investor strolls by-it won't reflect postively on your company. No investor will partner with a company that routinely attracts negative publicity. If your website is consistently down for extended periods of time (24 hours +), your search engine rankings will suffer greatly. Frequent downtime and site inaccessibility ranks among the top 5 negative ranking factors. The DOWNTIME Survival Guide This survival guide is also available as a standalone PDF. Visit: kiss.ly/survivaltime Things to do before your site crashes .. Buy DNS backup service A lot of downtime (and headaches) can be attributed to problems related to your DNS. DNS backup services constantly grab your DNS data and act as a backup if your primary DNS Always backup your database Buy a monitoring service You can purchase a service that pings your website every few minutes and notifies you (via text message, email, etc) if it goes down. In addition to making regular backups of your website and databases, make sure you create an additional backup before tweaking the database itself. goes down. 4 404 Make sure your domain name registration is up to date Use Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) Use appropriate server downtime error codes Using GWT is a no-brainer. It provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google and will notify you of any errors that are encountered while crawling it. Be sure to use appropriate redirect server codes. Consult the internet or So many downtime fiascos could be solved by simply remembering to renew your domain name, Go ahead and set your domain name to auto renew. Or purchase your name for the next ten years and set the domain your IT team for proper use of server codes. Example: it's generally better to tell crawlers that the downtime is temporary by returning a 503 HTTP result code (Service Unavailable) instead of returning an HTTP result code 404 (Not Found). registrar lock. What to do ifyour site crashes... Contact your hosting company or IT support Confirm that your site has gone down Verify that your site is actually down. Make sure the problem isn't your browser or internet connection. To be Try to determine the cause If you can, try to pinpoint why the downtime is occurring. Programming error? DNS problem? Expired domain? Hardware related? Get on the horn with your hosting company and see if they can assist you with your outage. Contact your IT support team or that super-nerdy neighbor of yours. doubly sure, phone a friend and have them test your site. 4 Notify users of the outage Regularly check in with your IT team Stay calm Chill out! It's not the end of the world. Downtime affects the best of Don't leave your users in the dark. Put out a message on your social media accounts to let users know Regular communication with your IT team is crucial. Cooperate with them if they need any help finding information about your website or server. Get an estimate from them us. Staying calm will go a long way in making sure that you and your team can resolve the problem as quickly as possible. what's going on and when you plan to have things up and running. If the outage is planned, send out an email beforehand letting users know the date and duration of the outage. as to how long it will take for the problem to be resolved. hermit crabs are awesome SOURCES: thewhir.com OKISSmetrics pingdom.com smashingmagazine.com observepoint.com kensium.net intownwebdesign.com david.weebly.com www (X) DODGING THE FAIL WHALE + DOWNTIME SURVIVAL GUIDE АHOY! i Did you know? ---- The first documented internet DoS-style attack occured during the week of February 7, 2000, when "mafiaboy," a 15-year-old Canadian hacker, Let's be honest. Website downtime can in- furiate us. And according to some, downtime can do much worse. It can affect user confidence, loy- alty and ultimately eat into our bottom line. How can we dodge the fail whale? That's the question of the hour. While we answer it, we might also orchestrated a series of DoS attacks against several e-commerce sites, including Amazon.com and eBay.com. engage in a bit of swashbuckling. Arrr! What is downtime? Downtime is when a particular application (like a website), cannot be accessed by its users. Even the big kids are plagued with downtime DOWNTIME OF POPULAR WEBSITES 2007 data. Top 20 websites determined by Alexa.com. Websites are listed in descending order of popularity. Yahoo.com (no downtime) Google (downtime: 7 min.) Myspace.com (1 hour) MSN.com (2 hours, 45 min.) Ebay.com (6 min.) Youtube.com (4 hours, 44 min.) Facebook.com (25 min.) Wikipedia.org (2 hours, 23 min.) Craigslist.org (1 hour, 9 min.) Live.com (1 hour, 48 min.) Amazon.com (21 min.) Blogger.com (4 hours, 47 min.) Go.com (8 min.) AOL.com (3 min.) Microsoft.com (13 min.) CNN.com (22 min.) Comcast.net (3 min.) IMDB.com (29 min.) Flickr.com (30 min.) Photobucket.com (1 hour, 23 min.) CAUSES/MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME CAUSES OF DOWNTIME Planned Downtime Disasters Component Failures Operator Error or Malicious Users EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: Upgrades for hardware components, firmware, drivers, operating system, and software applications. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, storms, etc. Accidental or Faulty hardware components, software defects, programming errors, viruses, file corruption, etc. intentional file deletion, unskilled operation, or experimentation. Hackers/malicious users. The internet A user The hosting server MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME Hijacked Pages (malicious content) Dead Pages (no loading at all) HTTP Errors Slow Load Times Hard Downtime (when a website is completely unavailable to its users) Soft Downtime (websites that merely exhibit poor performance) DOWNTIME CAN AFFECT ... 24 PROFITABILITY CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Amazon.com's net revenue for 2007 was $14.8 billion, or (if spread evenly over time) about $29,000 per minute. A large fraction of Amazon's revenue comes from online sales. When you website goes down, the typical consumer has no qualms about going to another site to buy In June of 2007 Amazon.com crashed for a period of about 2 hours, presenting users with cryptic HTTP messages. This single outage cost Amazon an estimated .. the item they're after. Not only will downtime affect sales, it will also impact customer satisfaction and $3.48 MILLION loyalty. If consumers anticipate problems every time they visit your website, they'll be less likely to trust their hard-earned cash with you. and existing! ΡOTENΤIAL INVESTORS SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS If your website experiences a technical glitch (planned or otherwise) when an investor strolls by-it won't reflect postively on your company. No investor will partner with a company that routinely attracts negative publicity. If your website is consistently down for extended periods of time (24 hours +), your search engine rankings will suffer greatly. Frequent downtime and site inaccessibility ranks among the top 5 negative ranking factors. The DOWNΤΙΜE Survival Guide This survival guide is also available as a standalone PDF. Visit: kiss.ly/survivaltime Things to do before your site crashes .. 1 3 Buy DNS backup service A lot of downtime (and headaches) can be attributed to problems related to your DNS. DNS backup services constantly grab your DNS data and act as a backup if your primary DNS Always backup your database Buy a monitoring service You can purchase a service that pings your website every few minutes and notifies you (via text message, email, etc) if it goes down. In addition to making regular backups of your website and databases, make sure you create an additional backup before tweaking the database itself. goes down. 4 404 Make sure your domain name registration is up to date Use Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) Use appropriate server downtime error codes Using GWT is a no-brainer. It provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google and will notify you of any errors that are encountered while crawling it. Be sure to use appropriate redirect server codes. Consult the internet or So many downtime fiascos could be solved by simply remembering to renew your domain name, Go ahead and set your domain name to auto renew. Or purchase your name for the next ten years and set the domain your IT team for proper use of server codes. Example: it's generally better to tell crawlers that the downtime is temporary by returning a 503 HTTP result code (Service Unavailable) instead of returning an HTTP result code 404 (Not Found). registrar lock. What to do ifyour site crashes... 1 Contact your hosting company or IT support Confirm that your site has gone down Verify that your site is actually down. Make sure the problem isn't your browser or internet connection. To be Try to determine the cause If you can, try to pinpoint why the downtime is occurring. Programming error? DNS problem? Expired domain? Hardware related? Get on the horn with your hosting company and see if they can assist you with your outage. Contact your IT support team or that super-nerdy neighbor of yours. doubly sure, phone a friend and have them test your site. 4 6 Notify users of the outage Regularly check in with your IT team Stay calm Chill out! It's not the end of the world. Downtime affects the best of Don't leave your users in the dark. Put out a message on your social media accounts to let users know Regular communication with your IT team is crucial. Cooperate with them if they need any help finding information about your website or server. Get an estimate from them us. Staying calm will go a long way in making sure that you and your team can resolve the problem as quickly as possible. what's going on and when you plan to have things up and running. If the outage is planned, send out an email beforehand letting users know the date and duration of the outage. as to how long it will take for the problem to be resolved. hermit crabs are awesome SOURCES: thewhir.com OKISSmetrics pingdom.com smashingmagazine.com observepoint.com kensium.net intownwebdesign.com david.weebly.com www (X) 5 5 ww DODGING THE FAIL WHALE + DOWNTIME SURVIVAL GUIDE АHOY! i Did you know? ---- The first documented internet DoS-style attack occured during the week of February 7, 2000, when "mafiaboy," a 15-year-old Canadian hacker, Let's be honest. Website downtime can in- furiate us. And according to some, downtime can do much worse. It can affect user confidence, loy- alty and ultimately eat into our bottom line. How can we dodge the fail whale? That's the question of the hour. While we answer it, we might also orchestrated a series of DoS attacks against several e-commerce sites, including Amazon.com and eBay.com. engage in a bit of swashbuckling. Arrr! What is downtime? Downtime is when a particular application (like a website), cannot be accessed by its users. Even the big kids are plagued with downtime DOWNTIME OF POPULAR WEBSITES 2007 data. Top 20 websites determined by Alexa.com. Websites are listed in descending order of popularity. Yahoo.com (no downtime) Google (downtime: 7 min.) Myspace.com (1 hour) MSN.com (2 hours, 45 min.) Ebay.com (6 min.) Youtube.com (4 hours, 44 min.) Facebook.com (25 min.) Wikipedia.org (2 hours, 23 min.) Craigslist.org (1 hour, 9 min.) Live.com (1 hour, 48 min.) Amazon.com (21 min.) Blogger.com (4 hours, 47 min.) Go.com (8 min.) AOL.com (3 min.) Microsoft.com (13 min.) CNN.com (22 min.) Comcast.net (3 min.) IMDB.com (29 min.) Flickr.com (30 min.) Photobucket.com (1 hour, 23 min.) CAUSES/MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME CAUSES OF DOWNTIME Planned Downtime Disasters Component Failures Operator Error or Malicious Users EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: Upgrades for hardware components, firmware, drivers, operating system, and software applications. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, storms, etc. Accidental or Faulty hardware components, software defects, programming errors, viruses, file corruption, etc. intentional file deletion, unskilled operation, or experimentation. Hackers/malicious users. The internet A user The hosting server MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME Hijacked Pages (malicious content) Dead Pages (no loading at all) HTTP Errors Slow Load Times Hard Downtime (when a website is completely unavailable to its users) Soft Downtime (websites that merely exhibit poor performance) DOWNTIME CAN AFFECT ... 24 PROFITABILITY CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Amazon.com's net revenue for 2007 was $14.8 billion, or (if spread evenly over time) about $29,000 per minute. A large fraction of Amazon's revenue comes from online sales. When you website goes down, the typical consumer has no qualms about going to another site to buy In June of 2007 Amazon.com crashed for a period of about 2 hours, presenting users with cryptic HTTP messages. This single outage cost Amazon an estimated .. the item they're after. Not only will downtime affect sales, it will also impact customer satisfaction and $3.48 MILLION loyalty. If consumers anticipate problems every time they visit your website, they'll be less likely to trust their hard-earned cash with you. and existing! ΡOTENΤIAL INVESTORS SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS If your website experiences a technical glitch (planned or otherwise) when an investor strolls by-it won't reflect postively on your company. No investor will partner with a company that routinely attracts negative publicity. If your website is consistently down for extended periods of time (24 hours +), your search engine rankings will suffer greatly. Frequent downtime and site inaccessibility ranks among the top 5 negative ranking factors. The DOWNΤΙΜE Survival Guide This survival guide is also available as a standalone PDF. Visit: kiss.ly/survivaltime Things to do before your site crashes .. 1 3 Buy DNS backup service A lot of downtime (and headaches) can be attributed to problems related to your DNS. DNS backup services constantly grab your DNS data and act as a backup if your primary DNS Always backup your database Buy a monitoring service You can purchase a service that pings your website every few minutes and notifies you (via text message, email, etc) if it goes down. In addition to making regular backups of your website and databases, make sure you create an additional backup before tweaking the database itself. goes down. 4 404 Make sure your domain name registration is up to date Use Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) Use appropriate server downtime error codes Using GWT is a no-brainer. It provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google and will notify you of any errors that are encountered while crawling it. Be sure to use appropriate redirect server codes. Consult the internet or So many downtime fiascos could be solved by simply remembering to renew your domain name, Go ahead and set your domain name to auto renew. Or purchase your name for the next ten years and set the domain your IT team for proper use of server codes. Example: it's generally better to tell crawlers that the downtime is temporary by returning a 503 HTTP result code (Service Unavailable) instead of returning an HTTP result code 404 (Not Found). registrar lock. What to do ifyour site crashes... 1 Contact your hosting company or IT support Confirm that your site has gone down Verify that your site is actually down. Make sure the problem isn't your browser or internet connection. To be Try to determine the cause If you can, try to pinpoint why the downtime is occurring. Programming error? DNS problem? Expired domain? Hardware related? Get on the horn with your hosting company and see if they can assist you with your outage. Contact your IT support team or that super-nerdy neighbor of yours. doubly sure, phone a friend and have them test your site. 4 6 Notify users of the outage Regularly check in with your IT team Stay calm Chill out! It's not the end of the world. Downtime affects the best of Don't leave your users in the dark. Put out a message on your social media accounts to let users know Regular communication with your IT team is crucial. Cooperate with them if they need any help finding information about your website or server. Get an estimate from them us. Staying calm will go a long way in making sure that you and your team can resolve the problem as quickly as possible. what's going on and when you plan to have things up and running. If the outage is planned, send out an email beforehand letting users know the date and duration of the outage. as to how long it will take for the problem to be resolved. hermit crabs are awesome SOURCES: thewhir.com OKISSmetrics pingdom.com smashingmagazine.com observepoint.com kensium.net intownwebdesign.com david.weebly.com www (X) 5 5 ww DODGING THE FAIL WHALE + DOWNTIME SURVIVAL GUIDE АHOY! i Did you know? ---- The first documented internet DoS-style attack occured during the week of February 7, 2000, when "mafiaboy," a 15-year-old Canadian hacker, Let's be honest. Website downtime can in- furiate us. And according to some, downtime can do much worse. It can affect user confidence, loy- alty and ultimately eat into our bottom line. How can we dodge the fail whale? That's the question of the hour. While we answer it, we might also orchestrated a series of DoS attacks against several e-commerce sites, including Amazon.com and eBay.com. engage in a bit of swashbuckling. Arrr! What is downtime? Downtime is when a particular application (like a website), cannot be accessed by its users. Even the big kids are plagued with downtime DOWNTIME OF POPULAR WEBSITES 2007 data. Top 20 websites determined by Alexa.com. Websites are listed in descending order of popularity. Yahoo.com (no downtime) Google (downtime: 7 min.) Myspace.com (1 hour) MSN.com (2 hours, 45 min.) Ebay.com (6 min.) Youtube.com (4 hours, 44 min.) Facebook.com (25 min.) Wikipedia.org (2 hours, 23 min.) Craigslist.org (1 hour, 9 min.) Live.com (1 hour, 48 min.) Amazon.com (21 min.) Blogger.com (4 hours, 47 min.) Go.com (8 min.) AOL.com (3 min.) Microsoft.com (13 min.) CNN.com (22 min.) Comcast.net (3 min.) IMDB.com (29 min.) Flickr.com (30 min.) Photobucket.com (1 hour, 23 min.) CAUSES/MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME CAUSES OF DOWNTIME Planned Downtime Disasters Component Failures Operator Error or Malicious Users EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: Upgrades for hardware components, firmware, drivers, operating system, and software applications. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, storms, etc. Accidental or Faulty hardware components, software defects, programming errors, viruses, file corruption, etc. intentional file deletion, unskilled operation, or experimentation. Hackers/malicious users. The internet A user The hosting server MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME Hijacked Pages (malicious content) Dead Pages (no loading at all) HTTP Errors Slow Load Times Hard Downtime (when a website is completely unavailable to its users) Soft Downtime (websites that merely exhibit poor performance) DOWNTIME CAN AFFECT ... 24 PROFITABILITY CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Amazon.com's net revenue for 2007 was $14.8 billion, or (if spread evenly over time) about $29,000 per minute. A large fraction of Amazon's revenue comes from online sales. When you website goes down, the typical consumer has no qualms about going to another site to buy In June of 2007 Amazon.com crashed for a period of about 2 hours, presenting users with cryptic HTTP messages. This single outage cost Amazon an estimated .. the item they're after. Not only will downtime affect sales, it will also impact customer satisfaction and $3.48 MILLION loyalty. If consumers anticipate problems every time they visit your website, they'll be less likely to trust their hard-earned cash with you. and existing! ΡOTENΤIAL INVESTORS SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS If your website experiences a technical glitch (planned or otherwise) when an investor strolls by-it won't reflect postively on your company. No investor will partner with a company that routinely attracts negative publicity. If your website is consistently down for extended periods of time (24 hours +), your search engine rankings will suffer greatly. Frequent downtime and site inaccessibility ranks among the top 5 negative ranking factors. The DOWNΤΙΜE Survival Guide This survival guide is also available as a standalone PDF. Visit: kiss.ly/survivaltime Things to do before your site crashes .. 1 3 Buy DNS backup service A lot of downtime (and headaches) can be attributed to problems related to your DNS. DNS backup services constantly grab your DNS data and act as a backup if your primary DNS Always backup your database Buy a monitoring service You can purchase a service that pings your website every few minutes and notifies you (via text message, email, etc) if it goes down. In addition to making regular backups of your website and databases, make sure you create an additional backup before tweaking the database itself. goes down. 4 404 Make sure your domain name registration is up to date Use Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) Use appropriate server downtime error codes Using GWT is a no-brainer. It provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google and will notify you of any errors that are encountered while crawling it. Be sure to use appropriate redirect server codes. Consult the internet or So many downtime fiascos could be solved by simply remembering to renew your domain name, Go ahead and set your domain name to auto renew. Or purchase your name for the next ten years and set the domain your IT team for proper use of server codes. Example: it's generally better to tell crawlers that the downtime is temporary by returning a 503 HTTP result code (Service Unavailable) instead of returning an HTTP result code 404 (Not Found). registrar lock. What to do ifyour site crashes... 1 Contact your hosting company or IT support Confirm that your site has gone down Verify that your site is actually down. Make sure the problem isn't your browser or internet connection. To be Try to determine the cause If you can, try to pinpoint why the downtime is occurring. Programming error? DNS problem? Expired domain? Hardware related? Get on the horn with your hosting company and see if they can assist you with your outage. Contact your IT support team or that super-nerdy neighbor of yours. doubly sure, phone a friend and have them test your site. 4 6 Notify users of the outage Regularly check in with your IT team Stay calm Chill out! It's not the end of the world. Downtime affects the best of Don't leave your users in the dark. Put out a message on your social media accounts to let users know Regular communication with your IT team is crucial. Cooperate with them if they need any help finding information about your website or server. Get an estimate from them us. Staying calm will go a long way in making sure that you and your team can resolve the problem as quickly as possible. what's going on and when you plan to have things up and running. If the outage is planned, send out an email beforehand letting users know the date and duration of the outage. as to how long it will take for the problem to be resolved. hermit crabs are awesome SOURCES: thewhir.com OKISSmetrics pingdom.com smashingmagazine.com observepoint.com kensium.net intownwebdesign.com david.weebly.com www (X) 5 5 ww DODGING THE FAIL WHALE + DOWNTIME SURVIVAL GUIDE АHOY! i Did you know? ---- The first documented internet DoS-style attack occured during the week of February 7, 2000, when "mafiaboy," a 15-year-old Canadian hacker, Let's be honest. Website downtime can in- furiate us. And according to some, downtime can do much worse. It can affect user confidence, loy- alty and ultimately eat into our bottom line. How can we dodge the fail whale? That's the question of the hour. While we answer it, we might also orchestrated a series of DoS attacks against several e-commerce sites, including Amazon.com and eBay.com. engage in a bit of swashbuckling. Arrr! What is downtime? Downtime is when a particular application (like a website), cannot be accessed by its users. Even the big kids are plagued with downtime DOWNTIME OF POPULAR WEBSITES 2007 data. Top 20 websites determined by Alexa.com. Websites are listed in descending order of popularity. Yahoo.com (no downtime) Google (downtime: 7 min.) Myspace.com (1 hour) MSN.com (2 hours, 45 min.) Ebay.com (6 min.) Youtube.com (4 hours, 44 min.) Facebook.com (25 min.) Wikipedia.org (2 hours, 23 min.) Craigslist.org (1 hour, 9 min.) Live.com (1 hour, 48 min.) Amazon.com (21 min.) Blogger.com (4 hours, 47 min.) Go.com (8 min.) AOL.com (3 min.) Microsoft.com (13 min.) CNN.com (22 min.) Comcast.net (3 min.) IMDB.com (29 min.) Flickr.com (30 min.) Photobucket.com (1 hour, 23 min.) CAUSES/MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME CAUSES OF DOWNTIME Planned Downtime Disasters Component Failures Operator Error or Malicious Users EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: EXAMPLES: Upgrades for hardware components, firmware, drivers, operating system, and software applications. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, storms, etc. Accidental or Faulty hardware components, software defects, programming errors, viruses, file corruption, etc. intentional file deletion, unskilled operation, or experimentation. Hackers/malicious users. The internet A user The hosting server MANIFESTATIONS OF DOWNTIME Hijacked Pages (malicious content) Dead Pages (no loading at all) HTTP Errors Slow Load Times Hard Downtime (when a website is completely unavailable to its users) Soft Downtime (websites that merely exhibit poor performance) DOWNTIME CAN AFFECT ... 24 PROFITABILITY CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Amazon.com's net revenue for 2007 was $14.8 billion, or (if spread evenly over time) about $29,000 per minute. A large fraction of Amazon's revenue comes from online sales. When you website goes down, the typical consumer has no qualms about going to another site to buy In June of 2007 Amazon.com crashed for a period of about 2 hours, presenting users with cryptic HTTP messages. This single outage cost Amazon an estimated .. the item they're after. Not only will downtime affect sales, it will also impact customer satisfaction and $3.48 MILLION loyalty. If consumers anticipate problems every time they visit your website, they'll be less likely to trust their hard-earned cash with you. and existing! ΡOTENΤIAL INVESTORS SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS If your website experiences a technical glitch (planned or otherwise) when an investor strolls by-it won't reflect postively on your company. No investor will partner with a company that routinely attracts negative publicity. If your website is consistently down for extended periods of time (24 hours +), your search engine rankings will suffer greatly. Frequent downtime and site inaccessibility ranks among the top 5 negative ranking factors. The DOWNΤΙΜE Survival Guide This survival guide is also available as a standalone PDF. Visit: kiss.ly/survivaltime Things to do before your site crashes .. 1 3 Buy DNS backup service A lot of downtime (and headaches) can be attributed to problems related to your DNS. DNS backup services constantly grab your DNS data and act as a backup if your primary DNS Always backup your database Buy a monitoring service You can purchase a service that pings your website every few minutes and notifies you (via text message, email, etc) if it goes down. In addition to making regular backups of your website and databases, make sure you create an additional backup before tweaking the database itself. goes down. 4 404 Make sure your domain name registration is up to date Use Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) Use appropriate server downtime error codes Using GWT is a no-brainer. It provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google and will notify you of any errors that are encountered while crawling it. Be sure to use appropriate redirect server codes. Consult the internet or So many downtime fiascos could be solved by simply remembering to renew your domain name, Go ahead and set your domain name to auto renew. Or purchase your name for the next ten years and set the domain your IT team for proper use of server codes. Example: it's generally better to tell crawlers that the downtime is temporary by returning a 503 HTTP result code (Service Unavailable) instead of returning an HTTP result code 404 (Not Found). registrar lock. What to do ifyour site crashes... 1 Contact your hosting company or IT support Confirm that your site has gone down Verify that your site is actually down. Make sure the problem isn't your browser or internet connection. To be Try to determine the cause If you can, try to pinpoint why the downtime is occurring. Programming error? DNS problem? Expired domain? Hardware related? Get on the horn with your hosting company and see if they can assist you with your outage. Contact your IT support team or that super-nerdy neighbor of yours. doubly sure, phone a friend and have them test your site. 4 6 Notify users of the outage Regularly check in with your IT team Stay calm Chill out! It's not the end of the world. Downtime affects the best of Don't leave your users in the dark. Put out a message on your social media accounts to let users know Regular communication with your IT team is crucial. Cooperate with them if they need any help finding information about your website or server. Get an estimate from them us. Staying calm will go a long way in making sure that you and your team can resolve the problem as quickly as possible. what's going on and when you plan to have things up and running. If the outage is planned, send out an email beforehand letting users know the date and duration of the outage. as to how long it will take for the problem to be resolved. hermit crabs are awesome SOURCES: thewhir.com OKISSmetrics pingdom.com smashingmagazine.com observepoint.com kensium.net intownwebdesign.com david.weebly.com www (X) 5 5 ww

Dodging The Fail Whale: A Downtime Survival Guide

shared by maggie on May 02
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Website downtime can be a real drag, especially if the site has important information you can't access. Downtime is when a website is down for a certain amount of time for whatever reason. This infogr...

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