GoDaddy Tests Small Business Website Failover Plans.

Here we are closing out a Tuesday with Hump Day fast approaching, and GoDaddy has found a way to bring small business websites throughout the world using their WordPress and Classic web hosting packages to a complete halt.

I knew something went wrong when I received a flurry of emails close to 5 PM EST about a number of customer websites being down.

I didn’t pay much attention because I saw most were back up in 5 minutes or less.

Then came the knockout punch some 15 minutes later when every last customer website I support was displaying the dreadful WordPress error message:

Error establishing a database connection

When checking GoDaddy’s system status page, I discovered the orange kiss of death across a number of its products (see image):

At the time of this publication, GoDaddy has yet to say what technicality caused this massive outage that has brought thousands of small businesses to their knees.

The image above confirmed my worst nightmare as the customers I support directly and indirectly began emailing and calling like the world was nearing an end.

By my watch, most of the websites I support were down for approximately 30-40 minutes (OUCH!). A few of my personal websites were down, but my most critical websites did not miss a beat, thanks to CloudFlare failover services!

You should certainly invest in CloudFlare or some other website hosting backup service in the event of another GoDaddy snafu, as witnessed today.

And speaking of a backup plan when a web host provider’s services go down, I have to give a hat tip to Growfio for thinking quickly and capitalizing on GoDaddy’s untimely misfortune.

For the time being, all is back well, and the websites are fully functioning. We’ll await to hear from GoDaddy should they fess up in full transparency to what brought down its small business empire.