Write down now who you call for each kind of failure, what counts as urgent, and how fast each person has agreed to respond, with logins in a place you control. Then add monitoring so you hear first.

Saturday morning

The message comes from a customer, or a text from a friend: your website is showing an error. It is Saturday morning, and the person who built the site does not work weekends.

The owner tries the hosting company and finds the account is in someone else's name. The support line asks for a PIN nobody has.

By Monday the site is back, and nobody knows how many people tried it in between.

None of it was bad luck. It was a plan that was never made.

The ways a site breaks

The sixth is the one nobody notices. The site looks normal, enquiries go nowhere, and the first sign is a customer asking why nobody replied.

Each failure belongs to someone different

Part of the confusion is that a website is several services from several companies.

The hosting company handles servers that are down. The registrar handles domains. The developer or maintainer handles updates, broken pages and hacked files. The email provider handles mail.

Some businesses have one company covering all of it. Many have four, with no list of which is which, and accounts held by whoever set each one up.

What counts as urgent

Not everything needs a Saturday phone call. Agree the difference in advance with whoever looks after the site, so nobody argues about it on the day.

Urgent usually means customers cannot reach you or are put at risk: the site down, a hacked page, checkout or booking broken, forms or email not arriving, a security warning in the browser.

A typo, a wrong photograph, a page that looks odd in one browser or a new promotion can wait for Monday. It feels urgent. It is not.

Response times, in writing

Ask each supplier a direct question: if this breaks on a Saturday, what happens? Answers range from a technician within the hour to an email on Monday.

Neither is wrong. What is wrong is not knowing which one you have.

Have it put in writing: the hours covered, how to report a problem, how quickly someone responds, and whether weekend work costs extra. A maintenance agreement is the usual place for it.

Response and repair are different promises. Someone may acknowledge a problem within an hour and still need longer to fix it; the agreement should say which it means.

A worked example

A photo booth rental business, run by a couple with three booths, does most of its work at Saturday weddings and gets most of its enquiries at weekends, when couples sit down to plan.

One Saturday this spring the site began showing a database error. The owners were setting up at a wedding and heard about it mid-afternoon, from a couple who messaged them after the site failed.

The designer who built the site replied on Monday. The hosting account was in the designer's name, so the host's weekend support would not talk to the owners.

The cause was a problem on the host's server, resolved by Monday lunchtime, after the site had been down for most of the weekend.

What changed afterwards was not technical. The hosting account moved into the business's name, the owners got their own logins and support PIN, and a monitoring service now texts them if the site stops responding.

They also signed a maintenance agreement that defines urgent, covers Saturdays for it, and names who picks up the phone.

Hearing first, not from a customer

Uptime monitoring services check your site every few minutes and send an email or text the moment it stops responding. Many are free for a single site.

Monitoring changes the order of events. You learn about the problem before customers do, and the clock on the fix starts earlier.

It does not catch everything. A form that has stopped sending still sits on a working page, so a monitor sees nothing wrong.

For that, send yourself a test enquiry through every form once a week. It takes two minutes and catches the quietest failure on the list.

The sheet that lives in the office

Write the plan on a single page, kept somewhere two or more people know about, with a copy away from the office.

For each service: the company, the phone number, the account number, the name the account is in, how to prove you are the owner, and what you are paying for.

Passwords do not belong on that sheet. Keep them in a password manager or a sealed envelope, with at least two people able to reach them.

Add the date each domain and certificate renews, and which card pays. An expired card is the most avoidable outage there is.

When the person you call is a friend

Many sites were built by a friend, a relative or a former employee, who answers when they can. That is generous, and it is not a support arrangement.

They may be away or busy at the weekend, and nobody can hold that against them.

If the site matters to the business, the arrangement should be with someone whose job it is to answer.

The counter-case

Some businesses can wait for Monday. A firm that takes no weekend enquiries, and whose site mostly confirms it exists, loses little if the site is down for a day and a half.

For them the plan can be smaller: a contact sheet, monitoring and a Monday morning call, with weekend cover added once the site starts taking bookings.

Any business that books, sells or takes enquiries at weekends needs more: know who answers, how fast, and what counts as urgent, before the Saturday it matters.

The plan, on one page

  1. List every service that makes up your website.
  2. Note who supplies each and whose name it is in.
  3. Agree what counts as urgent with your maintainer.
  4. Ask each supplier what happens on a Saturday.
  5. Get response times in writing.
  6. Set up uptime monitoring that texts you.
  7. Test every form once a week.

Step four is the one that exposes the gaps. Most owners have never asked, and the answer is far easier to hear on a Wednesday than in the middle of an outage.

When the person who built the site was doing you a favour, start with when a friend built your website.

Frequently asked questions

Who should I call when my website goes down?

It depends on the failure: the host for a server outage, the registrar for a domain, the developer for updates or hacked files, the email provider for mail.

What counts as an urgent website problem?

Anything that stops customers reaching you or puts them at risk: the site down, a hacked page, broken checkout or booking, forms or email not arriving, or a browser security warning.

Can a typo wait until Monday?

Yes. Typos, wrong photographs, a page looking odd in one browser or a new promotion feel urgent but are not. Agree the difference with your maintainer in advance.

How do I find out before customers do?

Set up uptime monitoring, which tests the site around the clock and sends a text or email the moment it stops responding. Many services are free for one site.

Does monitoring catch a broken contact form?

No. A form that has stopped sending still sits on a working page. Send a test enquiry through every form once a week to catch that failure.

What should the contact sheet include?

Each service's company, phone and account number, whose name the account is in, how to prove ownership, renewal dates and the card that pays. Keep passwords somewhere separate.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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