(We’ll get back to books and boats next week… but for a change, here’s a quick look behind the curtain of this site.)
For me, having a website and/or blog is a big part of my (small) business. The basic yearly workflow is this: Post weekly, when possible. Update the static pages occasionally. Ignore it the rest of the time.
I also prefer to be ignored by my web hosting company. As long as I pay my tiny bill, I don’t want to be hounded by the marketing team.
And then once or twice a year, I decide to do some crazy update that crashes everything. I cry for help, and I expect an immediate response.
That happened last week, when I did some “housecleaning” and asked the techies to change the name of my primary URL from livewiresailing.com to carolnewmancronin.com. I should’ve realized that this would break several key links—including the one that told WordPress where to find the files that drove the site. I guess I figured the smart techies would sort that out.
Friday morning, the site wasn’t showing up at all. And with a week away from my desk beginning at noon, I got on the phone. “We’ll take care of it,” one of the Newtek techs promised. As usual, they were expecting the fix to be a little simpler than it was. Since my site has been live for over ten years, there are, shall we say, some “legacy” complications.
So in spite of several emails back and forth over the weekend, it took those smart techies until Monday morning to get the site back up and running—with the requested improvements in place. They worked through all the issues, pointed out photos that still needed to be updated, and also told me how to fix the one still broken link. (If you spot any others, please let me know.)
Ten years is a lifetime in the internet service provider business. Newtek has changed its name and been bought up at least once… but through it all, their service to me, the little guy, has been fantastic.
Now they can go back to leaving me alone again, until the next time I crash something and cry for help. I have had to ask the marketing team to take me off their call list, explaining that I will come to them first if ever I’m ready to add more storage space or another client’s account. Until then, I’m sending out a very public thank you for all the great service they’ve provided over the past decade or more. So many companies ignore the small businesses that are the backbone of our workforce… but when I cry for help, Newtek responds.
