Like any sort of tools, equipment, and processes, social media and web tools can break.
It’s been a bumpy few days here for Social Photo Talk. Over the weekend, I migrated the site to a new web host. The files and database moved without too much hassle, but then I started seeing some odd behavior behind the scenes and with some of the automated processes (email notifications for comments, statistics, and so on). Things are now stable (back on the old web host), but it provided a good reminder that even with the best-laid plans, things can go awry.
How do you handle a website or technology failure? What do you do? It depends on the scenario. In our case, we posted a few updates to the @socialphototalk Twitter account as well as one short post (now gone) on the website while things were unstable.
Although the website outage was inconvenient for Social Photo Talk readers, your particular use of technology may have a more direct impact on your business. If your website for print order fulfillment is down, that might cost you some business. If you only have one method for contacting a client or lead (whether it’s email, Facebook, Twitter, etc), and that system is unavailable, that can have a business impact. Try to minimize your vulnerability by having plans in place in case of tech failure. Make sure that you have multiple ways to contact clients. Have a way to communicate status information if critical websites (ordering, proof galleries, etc) are unavailable.
On a related note, things should be back to 100% in the next several hours here at Social Photo Talk. Thanks for your patience if you’ve run into any oddness over the last few days.
Photo by Hryck., used under Creative Commons licensing
These other posts might be of interest to you:
