Picking a host for your website is probably one of the most important things you’ll ever do. And fate forbid that host goes down, you’ll need all the support you can get. Actually, all you really need is somebody that is willing to investigate the issue in a timely manner, and timely is the category that Leaseweb’s technical support fits least in to.

Yesterday (Monday, 25th July ‘08) the server stopped responding. I know I paid my bill because I have a receipt, so surely they haven’t cut it off?! Panic set in, there were people trying to access the server, I have two business clients relying on that server - one for the website, okay so that isn’t too bad, and the other for email! Lucky for me it’s the end of the working day, except - oh no, Leaseweb’s technical support is closed. They’re not in my time zone either, of course they can’t be blamed for that, it was my choice to rent a server outside of my country after all.

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The web is dominated by social networking websites, and if there’s one thing that keeps somebody coming back to your website, it just has to be the community aspect. It’s what makes a website a home and anchors oneself to the sea of domain names.

But sometimes we forget the basics. More often than not you find webmasters are busy focusing on what they think could be the next big thing instead of what their community actually needs.

On that note, one thing that has become transparent in my years of developing an online community - never expect the community to know what they need because they aren’t the ones running the community. I’m not suggesting that you ignore your users, but take what they say with a pinch of salt. Instead of reading too far into what they say, spend your time carefully working out what they need in an overall sense.

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