All website owners should have a plan for getting their site back online in case of an emergency. To develop an effective emergency plan, you must first understand what services are required to ensure that your website works properly. The resource provided can be used as a template for reviewing your website service providers. For each area of service there is a check box to indicate if this service or product is “mission critical”. By mission critical, I mean that without the service or product your website is useless. This is step 1 in developing a plan. For each area of service, you will want to note the vendor or person providing (supporting) the service or product. This will be helpful later as you assess your level of vulnerability and as you develop a backup plan for each.

1. Step 1: Website Emergency Planning
Your Website
Domain Name Use this diagram to identify the vendors
responsible for providing the service and to
• Registration & Renewal identify the areas that are mission critical (i.e. your
• DNS Service website is useless without these areas functioning
properly)
Mission Critical?
Website Hosting 3rd Party Apps
Other 3rd party apps or
• Web Hosting Service plugins used to enhance
• Email Hosting Service the site functionality.
Mission Critical? Mission Critical?
Communication eCommerce
• Bank/Merchant account
• Email Hosting Service • Payment Gateway
• VOIP Service • Shopping Cart etc.
• Live Chat etc. Website Front-End Website Back-End
Supports the front end: Mission Critical?
Mission Critical? What the visitor sees • Databases
when they access the site • Include files, scripts,
(html files, php, asp etc.) libraries, etc.
Mission Critical? Mission Critical?
3900 Westerre Parkway, Suite 300
Richmond, VA 23233
866.563.4797
www.websmithgroup.com