Support And Maintenance
The holiday season approaches.
When I go away, I like to have someone to do crisis management for me, in the past I have had a friend and colleague available to monitor my servers, make sure that things keep running and any issues which arise get dealt with. For the last three years, this has worked quite well, nothing has gone wrong and I have had a reliable person to hand over to on a quid pro quo basis. However, times change and he has moved to pastures new.
I am wondering,
a) is there someone here who would be interested in being my new ‘friend’
b) how do others manage holidays and the like, and finally
c) is there a place for some kind of a properly set up co-operative of WordPress developers and designers maybe to bulk buy and manage hosting?
Mike Pead, 
Tony Scott 1516 on Monday 19 May 2014 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi @tim – perhaps it would be useful to outline what would be involved in monitoring your servers, etc?
On your point c, a WP co-op, I’m not aware of such a body – perhaps we could look at setting up such an organisation through WPUK?
Tim 1528 on Monday 19 May 2014 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Tony, I run three Linux (Centos) servers with CPanel, if they fail they may need rebooting, although I do have a server management company who should intervene. Worst case would be, I suppose if a site broke and needed restoration, in which case there are full (cPanel) backups on a remote server which could be wgot (wgetted?). Although, at that point, I think I would prefer to interrupt my holiday and deal with it. In the last three years, nothing has ever gone wrong to require any intervention at all.
WP co-op. Absolutely, I think WPUK would be an ideal channel through which to set up such a thing.
mjr 0034 on Tuesday 20 May 2014 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi @tim – a. maybe but I don’t remember right now (it’s late) if cpanel messes servers up like plesk does; b. other members of my co-op manage sites and servers while I’m away or unavailable; c. probably… software.coop does some wordpress but it sounds like you want something less like a worker co-op and more like a supplier co-op? There used to be osAlliance but it was more about creating than maintaining and anyway it looks like it’s merged into another co-op which doesn’t appear to do WP… so yes, it looks like there may be a gap there.
Mike Pead 1410 on Tuesday 20 May 2014 Permalink | Log in to Reply
@tim – I’ve certainly thought about the same thing. I tend to keep a close eye on emails whenever on holiday or abroad, either for client queries, or to see if any websites have gone down (there’s automatic monitoring alerts setup on all my client sites), etc. Thankfully I’ve never ran into any issues, but if anything did go wrong, it could be a bit of a struggle to do some tasks from an iPhone on the beach! Having the reassurance of one or more people available would definitely be a help, so I would certainly support this idea. Mike