Contingencies For Future Outages
One of the reasons I'm not the biggest fan of hosted solutions over self-hosted. So just thinking out loud here, and sure plenty of you can chime in.
1) WordPress Site 301'd to MC Site - My first thought, that any model / studio could do themselves, is keep a fallback WP site that's completely 301'd to the MC site. The model / studio would use the URL to the WP site as their main website URL. That way, in the event of an outage, remove the 301s and at least you have a live website and not an error page.
The content and functionality of the site can be as robust or as simple as possible. Even if it's just general / informative with links to camming sites, adult marketplace sites, ect, that the member is a part of, it's better than a "under construction" splash page.
Flaws: Would need to pay for hosting (minimal), would have to build it, there would be slight lag with the browser being redirected, would have to handle in-house 2257 compliance and you'd have an entire site 301'd to another site, which is kind of backwards to begin with.
2) Use Self-hosted Site As Primary Domain - I'm going to use Kaitlin Fur-Passion as an example here. She's got her MC domain as a sub-domain of her current domain. In an instance such as this, a webmaster with a setup like hers could simply switch the links to the sub-domain to a "sorry, under maintenance" page. If the model / studio generally links to the main domain instead of the sub-domain, at least the traffic isn't hitting an error page.
In hindsight, this should be #1 as it makes more sense to me, but didn't think about it first, thus it's number two.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Those were the two approaches that a model / studio can take that I could think of to help mitigate future situations like this. Appears that MC is back up, but hiccups like this are a reality of hosting (especially hosted solutions) so it might be worth some future thought.
If anyone wants any help implementing something like this, let me know and I'd be more than happy to give you any information you need to start rolling on some of these solutions.
Comments
I like #2. After the last 15 hours, suggestions/ideas like this are very much welcomed.
Thank you for sharing
If you go that route, just make sure to make a list of URLs that are indexed in Google and 301 them to the new sub-domain to avoid losing any search rankings. Feel free to holler at me with any WP-related questions. Back before I started making all my money through the internet used to do WP development / SEO for an agency as well as moonlighting my own projects. Know a couple fun hacks for that platform. Also have dev rights on a handful of fun plugins.
Hey @webcamstartup, i got a Second Site but how do i subdomain my paysite to it?
I would holler at ModelCentro staff and see what configurations you'd need for the subdomain. I'm assuming it involves a CName record. I've seen multiple models doing it.
One disadvantage is that a lot of review sites / other directories that require an affiliate program to get added don't allow for subdomain sites. Can't name which ones they are off the top of my head, but I know it's a thing.
This is a little out of my range of tech knowledge but I sort of know what you're talking about. I think this is what I do, my main domain goes to wordpress and my "member's only section" goes to here. Only thing is my domain was born from Godaddy.
@Helena You can make your domain point towards any hosting provider. (Sounds techy but it's simple) There's something called "Nameservers". Your default GoDaddy nameservers will be pointed towards GoDaddy. If you get a hosting plan, the web host will provide you with new nameservers. It's as simple as going into GoDaddy and swapping out them out.
If you have any web development questions, feel free to shoot an email to info@webcamstartup.com and I have no problem answering them. Or reply here, but I'm way more responsive via email.