Imagine you’re sipping your morning coffee. You open your laptop, type in your favorite marketing site… and boom — it’s down. No homepage. No product pages. Nada.
This is where a trusty runbook saves the day. It’s like a superhero manual for outages. Especially for marketing websites.
Why are runbooks important? Because panicking is not a strategy. Knowing what to do, step by step, is the key to getting things back online fast.
What is a Runbook?
A runbook is a document that tells you how to fix stuff. In our case — how to bring your marketing site back from the dead.
It explains:
- What to check
- Who to contact
- Where the logs are
- How to handle customers and stakeholders
Even if it’s 2 a.m. and you’re half-awake, a good runbook will walk you through it.
Why Marketing Sites Need Their Own Runbooks
Marketing sites may seem simple. But they matter a lot. They’re the front door of your business.
When they’re down, your:
- Leads stop flowing
- SEO rankings can drop
- Paid ads lead to error pages
- Customer trust takes a hit
Your e-commerce team and engineers also might be asleep or working on the core product. That’s why marketing sites need their own customized runbooks.
What to Include in a Marketing Site Outage Runbook
Let’s build one together. Think of this like building a sandwich — layer by layer.
1. Quick Summary
This is the “go” card. What do you need to know right away?
- Where the code lives (e.g., GitHub repo)
- Who maintains the site
- How it’s deployed
- Monitoring tools used
Start with a clear picture before you dive deeper.
2. Triage Questions
Next, answer these questions:
- Is the whole site down or a specific page?
- Is it a front-end issue or back-end?
- Are customers reporting it, or was it caught by your monitoring tools?
This helps you decide what to fix first.
3. Access Info
If you’re troubleshooting, you’ll need to log in to places. This might include:
- Web hosting control panel
- CDN dashboard
- DNS provider
- Error log systems (like Sentry or New Relic)
Make sure to keep access secure but reachable. Think password managers and VPNs, not sticky notes.
4. Step-by-Step Fix Guide
This is the juicy part. Make it easy. Like a recipe.
- Visit the website. Confirm the issue.
- Check your uptime monitor (like Pingdom or StatusCake).
- View site logs or hosting error messages.
- Check DNS settings if there’s a domain issue.
- If you find a broken deploy, rollback to the last version.
- Test locally or on a staging server if needed.
- Push the fix. Watch the site come back alive!
Bonus points if you include sample screenshots. Or diagrams showing the architecture.
5. Who to Call
This is your hotline section. Include contacts like:
- Engineering lead
- DevOps team
- Hosting provider support
- Marketing team lead
Label them by priority. It’s no use calling the CEO when you need DNS help.
6. Communication Plan
Marketing sites are public, and outages can cause panic.
You’ll need two types of messages:
- Internal: Slack channels, Teams, internal status pages
- External: Email updates, social media posts, banners on the site
Have a few pre-written messages for each. Edit slightly, hit send. Done.
7. Postmortem Template
Once things are running again, don’t just move on. A postmortem helps you avoid this mess next time.
Include fields like:
- What happened?
- What was the root cause?
- How long was the site down?
- What did we learn?
- What permanent fixes will we implement?
Keep it blame-free. Your future self will thank you.
Tips for Writing a Runbook That People Will Actually Use
If it’s boring or confusing, no one will open it. So make it:
- Short: Keep paragraphs tight and clear
- Scannable: Use bold headings and bullets
- Up-to-date: Review at least every quarter
- Fun: Add cartoons, emojis, jokes — whatever works!
Tools That Can Help
You don’t have to manage this in a Word doc from the ’90s. Use modern tools like:
- Notion: Great for formatting and linking to resources
- Confluence: Easy to organize and search for procedures
- GitHub Wiki: Perfect if your marketing site lives in a repo
You can even automate some parts, like checking error logs and formatting postmortems.
Real-Life Scenario: Let’s Walk Through One
Let’s say you’re working on a weekend campaign. Overnight, traffic spikes and the homepage crashes.
You get an alert from Uptime Robot. You follow your runbook:
- Log into hosting panel
- See traffic load is 4x normal
- Scale up the server capacity or switch CDN rules
- Ping the DevOps person via Slack if needed
- Post a tweet: “We’re seeing unusual traffic. Working to resolve.”
- Site is back online in 10 minutes
The runbook made it easy. You didn’t have to guess. You just followed the map.
Last Piece of Advice
Runbooks are way more than documents. They’re peace of mind. They’re your IT fire extinguisher. And they show your team you care about doing things right.
Marketing teams don’t have time for technical rabbit holes in a crisis. So load them up with access, instructions, and easy-to-follow steps before anything breaks.
Outages are stressful. But with the right runbook? You’ll be the cool-headed hero sipping coffee while others panic.
Now go write one!
