Outages = Bad, Blogging During Outage = Helpful?

Well drat. Our 100% uptime value on our Pingdom report is now a thing of the past. You can read all the gory details in this Status blog post.

Yesterday's outage was the first we've had in a long time - hopefully the last for a long time also. It was also the first we've had since we started publishing these blogs and it pointed out several advantages to our new blogging approach:

1.) Have a separate set of servers in a different location that can continue to work even if the main site is down.
These blogs are hosted by TypePad.com on their servers which were unaffected by our charting issues.

2.) Keep everyone as informed as possible.
Despite things being very hectic here during the outage, we took time to update our Status blog whenever our understanding of the problem changed.

3.) Explain the problem and explain the fix.
Let everyone know that this particular chink in our armor has been identified and fixed.

So, while all outages are bad - really, really bad - I hope that our Status blog kept people better informed than ever before.

Remember, if you ever think that we might be down, check our Status blog and/or our Pingdom report for confirmation.

And please use the comments section below to let me know if you have any suggestions for improving how we communicate with you during outages.

(Yeah, yeah - "Don't have any!" - That's always the goal... but, it, isn't, easy.)

I want to personaly thank you for yor hard work and honest approach to these problems. Many of us charters have had real jobs with real problems... sometimes many more real problems than we wanted. So we understand... keep up the good work.

Posted by: Richard H Demshar March 14, 2009 at 01:42 AM

I think your blogs are great and I think you guys handled your recent outage extremely well. I was using your charts when the outage hit. The first thing I noticed is that you put up an status page extremely fast. My RSS feed reader then picked up the blog posts explaining the outage. Then a few people posted the outage to Twitter. I was appreciative of all your information as it allowed me to understand that the problems were on your side and I didn't need to take action with my set-up. Seth Godin is a rather well known "thinker" of sorts and recent posted this on his blog dealing with interaction: /Quote Demonization The closer you get to someone, something, some brand, some organization... the harder it is to demonize it, objectify it or hate it. So, if you want to not be hated, open up. Let people in. Engage. Interact. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/03/demonization.html /Quote For any on-line company that is susceptible to power outages or equipment failures, quick and open engagement is a great way to mollify potential customer frustration and to keep them on your side. Cheers. ~Shepard =^.^=

Posted by: Keith Shepard March 14, 2009 at 03:24 AM

Blogging during outage was very helpful! I would recommend that this is a normal course of action for any technical issues going forward. Thanks for your great work! Regards, Eric

Posted by: Eric Grunewald March 14, 2009 at 06:06 AM

Having the blog during the outage definitely helped. I think the worst thing when there is an outage is the uncertainty of what is going on, or what to expect. With the blog, I didn't have to wonder, so I felt at ease. The blog is easy to access. I didn't need to make a phone call or send an email to get information about the problem. The blog is proactive, rather than reactive. I like that very much. Computers do have problems now and again, so I do not expect absolute perfection. The service works properly 99% of the time and it has been quite a while since the last outage. The problems were also resolved quickly on the same day. The customer service at StockCharts.com could serve as a model for other companies. Keep up the great work.

Posted by: Clinton Alexander March 16, 2009 at 01:25 AM

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