When my phone rang, I looked at it and noticed it was someone I had built a website for many years ago, and it was many years that I last heard from him.
It turned out he had an immediate dilemma.
He had just launched a new business, one that was seeking investors, and he had already put out dozens of calls to prospective hopefuls. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, his website went down. It turned out, the guy who built it for him, took it down on purpose. Along with that, he took down the email address (because the website and email address used the same domain name).
On the phone, he was still calm but eager to get the ball rolling on building a replacement website. I didn’t ask why the other guy took his site down, it really wasn’t any of my business. All I needed to know is that I had a former client who needed me to step in and get a new website up and running.
In fact, I was grateful that he remembered to call me, even if I wasn’t his first choice to built a website.
We negotiated a price for what was expected to be a very basic website, no more than just a single page, with all the particulars for his prospective investors, and to get it up ASAP.
All we needed was login information for his domain name. He sent that over to me, and I got to work right away.
TIP: Never allow your webmaster to register a domain name for you. You register it yourself, you retain the account and login with your registrar, so that you can always take back control of your website and e-mail address.
We were able to tap into Google’s search cache to retrieve photos and content, and used it to recreate a new website that looked similar.
In less than 24 hours, we had created a two-page site using a very lightweight WordPress theme, and we had his email functioning as well.
It’s not really our business to know why another website developer chose to take down a client site. And perhaps, we don’t want to know. Our goal is to provide a service to businesses who need us, and in a case like this, on an emergency basis.
It felt great to know that we could put out a fire like this in short notice, and save someone’s business.
Our commitment to clients is to be there for them, no questions asked.