The Host's Casebook

23 short stories about ordinary things going wrong, and what people did about them.

A note on authenticity. Every case here is a composite written by the editors. They are built from situations that come up again and again, and none is the account of a particular named person or business. Real reader stories are welcome through the submission page, and they will be marked as reader-submitted when published.

The shop that moved on a Friday afternoon

A small online shop selling ceramics decided to change hosts. The owner picked Friday afternoon because that was when...

The blogger and the vanishing domain

A food blogger had run her site for six years. The domain was renewed automatically every year with a card that she...

The portfolio with a certificate warning

A freelance designer had a lovely portfolio. A prospective client sent a message to say the site showed a security...

The club newsletter that went to spam

A local cycling club had been sending a monthly newsletter from its own domain for years. After switching to a new...

The agency and the staging site that got indexed

A small web agency built a client's new site on a staging subdomain. When the client approved it, the agency pushed the...

The photographer and the 4 MB hero image

A wedding photographer was disappointed that her new site loaded slowly. She had upgraded her hosting twice and nothing...

The developer and the leaked key

A freelance developer committed a configuration file to a public code repository. It contained the database password...

The nonprofit and the unclaimed subdomain

A charity had once used a third-party service for event registration, with a subdomain pointing to it by CNAME. After...

The bakery whose map listing pointed at a dead page

A neighbourhood bakery had a website built by a friend five years earlier, then moved to a cheaper plan when the friend...

The accountant who was impersonated

A one-person accounting practice received an angry call from a client who had paid an invoice to a new bank account....

The school fundraiser that crashed at its best moment

A primary school ran an online auction for its new library. The parents' committee shared the link in several groups at...

The band that lost its mailing list

A local band collected email addresses at gigs with a paper sheet and typed them into a plugin on their website. After...

The translator who lost her portfolio to a lapsed plan

A freelance translator paid for hosting annually. The renewal notice went to an old email address she no longer used....

The podcast whose episodes lived on a free plan

A hobby podcaster hosted audio files on a free website plan to avoid paying for podcast hosting. It worked well with a...

The estate agent and the twelve-megabyte slideshow

An estate agent's homepage opened with a full-screen slideshow of eight property photos. Each one was a camera original...

The hobby forum and the registration flood

A small forum for vintage radio enthusiasts woke up to find 4,000 new members overnight. None had posted yet. Over the...

The nonprofit site that only one volunteer understood

A community garden's website was built by a volunteer who knew what he was doing and kept everything in his own head....

The restaurant that put its menu in a PDF

A restaurant added its menu as a PDF to the website, scanned from a printed copy. It was an image of text, forty...

Two sites on one account, one infection

A web designer hosted two client sites and her own on a single hosting account to save money. One client's site ran an...

The hobbyist and the home connection

A keen hobbyist ran a small website from a Raspberry Pi at home and pointed his domain at the home router's address. It...

The tutor who wanted a proper email address

A private tutor had a free webmail address on her business cards and wanted something with her own name. She bought a...

The online course and the video bills

A fitness instructor sold a video course through her website and uploaded the videos directly to her hosting account....

The local news site and the comment spam

A volunteer-run local news site enabled comments on every story. For a year it was lively and polite. Then spammers...