One of the first things that web hosting customers do when their site is down is send in a support ticket. If you had to give your customers a "checklist" of things to do before sending in a ticket, what would it be? Eg., ping site, traceroute, etc. What would you tell them to do first, second, and so on?

Vito

LOL, while they do all those things on the checklist, the site would be back online and no time for a complaint. :D

Originally posted by vito
What would you tell them to do first

Ping/Traceroute/etc is Latin to some folks. That's okay. One tool we recommend for remotely checking the response of a site is Sam Spade.

Putting their own domain in to this:

http://www.samspade.org/t/safe?u=http://www.demodemo.com

will let them know quickly and efficiently whether their site is reachable from another source, without requiring any additional software or understanding any methods other than using a web browser.

Regards

Gary

Or they could use the Alertra.com "Spotcheck" too.

Yes, and most hosts have an offsite emergency page

Thanks. I appreciate the suggestions and the links. However, I'm more interested in the actual processes that should be checked prior to contacting the host, and in what order, regardless of whether we assume the client understands the terminology or process. So when a site is down, what are the logical things to check in order of importance? Ping a site first? What's second?

Again, let's assume a customer knows what the terms mean...

Vito

1) Check to see if the host made any annoucements, etc
2) Ask a friend if they can access the website
3) Ping the server to see if it responds
4) Traceroute the server
5) Submit a support ticket

Just my $0.02 :)

Originally posted by vito
What should customer do if site is down?

If you had to give your customers a "checklist" of things to do before sending in a ticket, what would it be? What would you tell them to do first?

Post a thread in the WHT forums with subject: DEMODEMO IS DOWN ...AGAIN!!!!

Make sure they use this message icon for the added effect: :mad:

Sometimes when my website was down my server responded to pings & tracerts...
But anyway, pinging the website it's the easiest possible method.

Originally posted by vito
Thanks. I appreciate the suggestions and the links. However, I'm more interested in the actual processes that should be checked prior to contacting the host, and in what order, regardless of whether we assume the client understands the terminology or process. So when a site is down, what are the logical things to check in order of importance? Ping a site first? What's second?

Again, let's assume a customer knows what the terms mean...

Vito
We have a set procedure for such instances. I won't post the link here [waves to the mods :D] but it's in our support forum and I'm sure that you being an intelligent chap, will have no problem in finding it. :)

Aussie -- it would be quite rare that your clients would need to use that procedure ;)

Originally posted by phpcoder
Aussie -- it would be quite rare that your clients would need to use that procedure ;)
Oh, don't you worry, it gets used. :eek: :o

Personally we didn't yet have a set procedure, but after reading this topic it occurs to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have one implemented, although hopefully it won't have to be used much at all ;)

Looks like Vito's working on a new tutorial for Demo-Demo
"What to do if your site goes down."

Considering some clients may not know what a ping or tracert is...I would first suggest:
REBOOT your own computer and try again.
So many times dialup users just have a bad connection and they simply need to re-connect.
Its been known to work wonders :D

Again, let's assume a customer knows what the terms mean...
:)

1) Very often, client's Internet connection. Check the Internet connection and restart the computer then try again.

2) Make sure that browser Internet connection setting is setup correctly.

3) Use services such as alertra.com to make sure if the site is really down. If not, repear step 1 and step 2.

4) Check company lastest news, forums, or helpdesk updates. (if applicable)

5) Submit a helpdesk.

6) Call company phone to listen the current network updates. We always have something like "Emergency Notice........." if the server goes down.

Besides, always encourage your clients to use an email that is located outside of your network. Lack of communications happened the most when they use their domain name email as a default email address, and use that email in the reply field to ask... "Hey I can't view my site, emails are down" Some customers never listened, and that's why we put a line in the TOS that we're not responsible if things like this occured.

Thanks, everyone for the great input. :gthumb:
Originally posted by blue27
Looks like Vito's working on a new tutorial for Demo-Demo
"What to do if your site goes down."
Blue, you're just tooooooo sharp... ;)

Vito

It would be nice for a utility that gave an average user the information on where the problem lies.

Ie based on certain triggers it would respond with certain messages.

Eg if they were getting packetloss on hop2 of a trace it would report

"It appears you are loosing packets at x.x.x.x, packetloss can result in slow connections to websites and even make them unreachable. " etc etc with instructions informing them on what todo.

or

"Your requests to contact the server has failed, please check our emergency page for more information."

1. Open your browser and visit your site
2. submit a ticket, or send support an email.

There is no need to do anything else. If Apache is down, you will still be able to ping & traceroute the server.

Anyways, the host will then check the server, your site, and let you know if there is a problem or not.

:D

The number one thing that numerous announcements have been sent out to customers here is to include detailed account info in every ticket.

It's amazing the amount of tickets that come in without key details such as username, domain and server name. If they have emailed, the only detail we sometimes have is the email address which is not enough to pin it to a specific account/server unless I'm around and can search through the billing system (I'm the only one with access to this).

I know it's not strictly related to 'server down' incidents but if you're making this into a tutorial you may want to include a note about mentioning key account details in submitted support tickets.

Do all the above plus:
Pray and then have a cold one!

add this to their check list

do a WHOIS on their domain

:D