The tragedy at Virginia Tech is a horrific, unforgettable event. My heart and prayers go out to all the family and friends affected by the hell they are going through.
Earlier this week, Tim O'Keeffe and Michael Clendenin both talked about VT’s response to the crisis and mused about the use of a second website or ‘dark site’ for crisis communications. The killings and the ensuing confusion of fearful parents and family was accentuated by the loss of the school’s website in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. One only hopes that VT was only not prepared for the potential spike in traffic and that the crowds of concerned visitors crashed the website (for it would have been an extraordinarily bad decision to have made the conscious decision to pull down the website voluntarily during such a crisis).
In short, there were likely many tens-of-thousands of concerned people attempting to access the VT website for more information on the tragedy – and likely were hoping to glean some information about a loved one. The website though was not available.
A secondary or ‘dark site’ that could be published quickly in a crisis to communicate breaking news and information would not have solved this dilemma. Proper infrastructure planning and hosting could only have prevented a site collapse. If the university lacked the ability to publish information to the home page and therefore decided to turn-off the website, then shame on them. With modern content management and near instantaneous publishing capabilities for even the lowest-tech luddites, VT wouldn’t require a special dark site to communicate details of the unfolding tragedy. The university would merely publish information to the website as it became available and provide links from the home page and media center. For example, after I write this column in MS-Word, it takes about 60 seconds to publish it live (but I could do it in as little as 20 seconds).
Dark sites have their place and purpose, and are particularly valuable in large, planned and complex events (such as a merger or acquisition), but the use of a dark site for crisis communications has largely been supplanted by modern publishing technology and the advanced content management system. Every organization should have a crisis communications plan, and every organization should be able to publish very quickly as the need arises. Furthermore, in the event of a crisis and a landslide of unexpected traffic, it is wise to plan in advance with your website host to ensure they can accommodate large spikes in traffic should the event arise.
Comments (2)
Toby,
Perhaps I missed something, but could you expound a bit on your point that a "secondary or ‘dark site’ that could be published quickly in a crisis to communicate breaking news and information would not have solved this dilemma."
I do not dispute the importance of proper infrastructure and planning. But it seems to me that in the event that servers are overwhelmed or some major crisis erupts that overrides the importance of all other content on the normal site, it would take too long to have developers produce not just the text changes but design changes one would desire to have the site focus on the issue at hand and drive visitors to important key contacts. How awkward would it have been for VA Tech to simply post up new text in a front page article within the site's CMS template, while retaining information about applying to Virginia Tech, Student Life, and Sports at Virginia Tech? Maybe the most recent baseball score?
If I understand correctly -- and part of why I asked for some knowledge of best practices for such a site -- the dark site should have minimal graphics and animation to avoid overwhelming those servers and minimize upload time for those visiting the site looking for critical info. Posting to your normal homepage would likely leave in place some of those "heavy" objects, wouldn't it?
Seems to me this is what a dark site is for -- having a ready-made site (to which you would necessarily have to add timely textual content) you can "flip a switch" to engage.
Can you help me understand? Thanks.
Posted by Michael Clendenin | April 23, 2007 11:09 AM
Posted on April 23, 2007 11:09
Hi Michael, thanks for your comments. I would answer your comments with a question... why would you turn-off the rest of your website? In a crisis such as this, a large swath of the population is clammering to learn more about the organization... particularly one of the most important stakeholders, the media, which is no doubt looking for background information and context on the organization as it reports on the crists (e.g. how many students attend VA tech, what are the curriculum specialties, etc., how does the crisis affect the School of _____). Why would you want to turn-off all of this valuable and potentially critical information? Well to each their own, but I wouldn't. In a time of crisis, people want more information, not less.
However, there's nothing wrong with creating a seperate mini-site with a seperate URL with a link from the home page of the organization. And with a modern CMS, you would not have to design a whole new seperate or dark site well in advance.
Posted by Toby Ward | May 1, 2007 1:04 AM
Posted on May 1, 2007 01:04