We’ve all had that moment – the “uh-oh” when a website goes haywire and panic sets in.
As someone who’s worked behind the scenes on dozens of small business sites, I’ve seen the digital equivalent of plumbing disasters: things breaking, disappearing, or behaving like they’ve got a mind of their own. The good news? All of these website nightmares were 100% preventable. Let’s unpack five of the worst I’ve fixed – and how you can dodge them.
1. The Vanishing Website
One morning, a client’s entire site was gone. Blank page. Nothing. What happened? Their domain expired without warning – the email reminders were going to an old address. A simple auto-renew setting could’ve saved hours of stress (and lost enquiries).
Lesson: Always keep your domain and hosting on auto-renew, and double-check the contact info tied to your accounts.
*We can take this off your to do list completely – your annual domain renewal is INCLUDED our your monthly WordPress maintenance service! Check out the plans here
2. Classic "I can't login" meltdown
Another client changed their password… and promptly forgot it. No problem, right? Except they also deleted the admin user account “to tidy things up.” We had to go through the host’s file manager to manually recreate access. It wasn’t fun.
Lesson: Never delete the only admin user. And if you’re cleaning up, check with your web person first.
3. Plugin Chaos
Another client installed “just a few helpful plugins” – about 23 of them – and the site started glitching like a haunted house. Menus disappeared, contact forms stopped working, and the homepage slowed to a crawl.
Lesson: More definitely isn’t better. Stick to essential, well-reviewed plugins and avoid overlap (like multiple SEO or security tools). If you’re unsure, ask us! We’re here to help and will happily verify any plugins you’d like to try out. We can also setup a staging version of your site to play with, so you can test new plugins before going live.
4. Hacked site horror
One site was showing… let’s just say content that had nothing to do with a local dog grooming business. They hadn’t updated WordPress, plugins, or themes in over a year. Hackers walked right in.
Lesson: Updates aren’t optional. They’re your site’s immune system. Regular maintenance is like brushing your teeth – boring, but vital. Our comprehensive WordPress maintenance services take care of all of it – backups, updates, monitoring and scans to keep the bad guys out.
5. No website backups since launch... big oops!
Our last client trauma story starts with 3rd party hosting with insufficient backup systems. We built their site, which they wanted to host somewhere else (no worries, no hard feelings but as you’ll read, also no guarantees!). We built the site, backed it up and launched on their hosting. Job done.
Fast forward 2 years, and while they had written many new pages of content, changed images and evolved (as every site should!) they did NOT complete regular backups of their site, and nor did they do any incremental plugin updates. One day they decided to do ALL the updates, all at once… which… broke everything.
They contacted their host to restore a backup, only to find that the backup system wasn’t properly setup on their server and there was none available.
Thorn Creative came to the rescue, but this client was left faced with two options, a slow, costly painstaking recovery effort, or to restore the only backup that existed (the one we had from a year ago!). They chose to restore the backup, but lost two years of new blog posts and content changes! We migrated to a full maintenance plan after that, and it’s been 3 years of perfect smooth sailing since.
Lesson: Always, always have a backup system in place. We recommend multiple backup systems to act as a failsafe for a failsafe! Then you know with certainty you’ll be able to restore your site.
Let's keep the nightmares in the movies
Your website should be your hardest-working employee – not a ticking time bomb. Most of these disasters stemmed from good intentions, but a little expert guidance goes a long way. If you’re feeling unsure about the health of your website, let’s chat. I offer friendly audits and care plans that keep things running smoothly – no tech jargon, just peace of mind.
