Well, here we are again. Another day, another client call that starts with, “Hey, not sure if this is related, but my website’s showing some weird Russian text and my email’s down.”
Oh, it’s related.
It’s always related.
What we’ve got is a classic case of Tech Support Roulette. You know the game — someone poked around in GoDaddy at 1am because they “just had a gut feeling something needed optimizing,” and now nothing works, the site’s vanished, and somehow the office printer won’t stop printing the company logo over and over again.
And don’t get me started on GoDaddy. If you’ve talked to me more than 5 minutes, you’ve likely already been INTRODUCED to my opinions on GoDaddy. That whole interface feels like it was coded during a Red Bull-induced fever dream by someone with a deep hatred for intuitive design. Need to renew your domain? Sure, but first click through six upsells, two CAPTCHA tests, and a pop-up asking if you want to “TurboSecure™” your site with an SSL that costs more than your car payment.
Anyway… let’s be clear: I don’t expect everyone to know what DNS stands for (though if you think it’s “Do Not Spam,” we need to talk). But when someone with exactly zero technical training logs in and clicks around like they’re defusing a bomb on “Hard Mode,” bad things happen. And by “bad,” I mean you’ve basically declared war on your own infrastructure.
And yet, every time I hear that magical phrase, “It worked fine yesterday,” I have to chuckle. Because it either didn’t work yesterday and nobody noticed, or it did work yesterday… before somebody’s nephew with a freshly minted CompTIA cert decided to “clean things up.”
Spoiler alert: they didn’t clean up. They detonated.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the all-star lineup of repeat offenders:
-
GoDaddy’s UI, which was apparently designed by someone who lost a bet.
-
Hosting providers that call their support line “award-winning”, while simultaneously disconnecting your chat after 60 seconds of inactivity.
-
Random WordPress plugins from developers who last updated them during the Obama administration.
-
And of course, clients who think caching means saving a file to a flash drive.
Now look, I get it. This digital stuff is confusing. There are passwords, firewalls, email records, HTML, CSS, PHP, and enough acronyms to make a government agency blush. And honestly? You shouldn’t have to know it all. That’s what people like me are for. People who can smell a DNS propagation issue from 100 yards away. People who’ve seen things. Dark things. Like someone trying to host their business site on a free Wix account in 2025.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the only real constant in web support is chaos. I once had a client call me in a panic because they were convinced their site had been hacked by the Chinese government. Turns out their cat had walked across the keyboard mid-password entry and triggered a lockout. True story.
And don’t even get me started on email. The number of people still forwarding mail through Hotmail or Yahoo (yes, Yahoo) in 2025 is truly mind-blowing. Look, if your email ends in “@earthlink.net,” you might as well be trying to send faxes via carrier pigeon. And when it breaks? That’s on you, my friend.
I will give some credit where it’s due, though. Every now and then, I’ll get a client who fully admits, “Yeah, I think I messed something up.” And I appreciate that level of honesty. It’s rare. Most of the time, folks act like the website just “decided” to stop working. As if the internet is some kind of moody teenager that gets randomly offended and shuts down your contact form out of spite.
So what’s the takeaway here?
Simple. Don’t touch what you don’t understand. Just like you wouldn’t start yanking wires under your car’s hood because the check engine light came on, don’t go fiddling with your domain settings because “you read a thing on Reddit.” Call your tech guy. Or better yet — text me. I don’t need the full story. Just send me a screenshot, maybe a few expletives, and the login info. We’ll get it sorted.
And for the love of all things digital, if you do make a change, please — and I cannot stress this enough — WRITE. IT. DOWN. Save it somewhere. I don’t care if it’s a sticky note on your monitor or carved into your desk with a pocket knife. If I ask for your login and you say, “I think it’s admin1234?” we’re going to have a moment.
So yeah — if your site is MIA, your email’s acting possessed, or your nephew just “improved” your server settings, don’t panic. I’ve got duct tape, coffee, backups, and a fairly refined sense of sarcasm.
Just another day in tech support paradise. Welcome to the madness.
