A few weeks ago I switched the hosting for this site and Around Carson over to a new host, DreamHost. And maybe it’s just that I brought the bad luck with me, but July of 2006 just happened to turn out to be their worst month ever, in terms of system failures, network problems, and power outages. But instead of keeping it all quiet and making their customers wonder why their sites were unavailable so often (and making me wonder if I made a bad decision), they instead detailed the whole mess on their blog. And they’re even brave enough to say that they’re still having router problems, and that not everything is fixed yet. They also keep a running status page detailing every little bit of downtime, so you can always check and find out why your site is acting squirrely.

This is the way companies should communicate with their customers. And it doesn’t hurt that they’ve peppered the post with photos of hurricanes, fires, floods, and the Hindenburg. Kind of gives you a sense that maybe a couple of hours downtime on your website isn’t that bad, when you look at it.