In the past week, we’ve been called on to rescue yet another website that mysteriously disappeared.

This might seem strange or suspicious, but it’s not. As websites have moved into modern times, many of them can be editing from any web browser, with no special software required. That feature is very helpful for organizations and businesses who want to be able to make changes to their own websites without paying a professional every time. On the other hand, it makes most websites vulnerable to hacking, since any hacker can try to login.

(Often people think no one would want to hack into their website because they don’t store customer data or take payments, however most hackers just want to rewrite your code a little bit to link back to their websites.)

Because of this vulnerability, the technology that makes your website work needs to be updated regularly, just like your smartphone’s operating system and its apps. Unlike with your smartphone, sometimes those updates don’t run automatically. And sometimes when they do, it breaks everything.

Luckily for one company, we were able to fix everything in one hour!

A family-owned machining company in Dayton, Ohio, awoke one day to find their website, previously a nice-looking modern website featuring pictures of their services, was reduced to a white screen with a line of black text across the top, describing some inscrutable technical error. The company had other work to do, and didn’t report the problem to their IT company for several weeks.

We learned of it last Friday and, armed with their passwords, we were able to restore the website in about 10 minutes, and then spent the balance of the hour updated and upgrading their technology to current standards. Total cost: $125. The cost to rebuild the website from scratch? $4,000. Savings: $3,875.

If you are reading this and you aren’t on a maintenance plan, call or email us to subscribe now. We can prevent this from happening to you, creating a loss of business and sales for you when your customers think something is very wrong or can’t find your contact information.

If something terrible has already happened to your website or the website of someone you know, give us the chance to save the day. It makes us feel good.