Dreamhost, the company which hosts this site, recently suffered some pretty major issues. A few of the files I host here got messed up, there was some downtime, etc… No big deal for me, since this site only gets about 1,000 visits a month, but pretty bad for folks running businesses at Dreamhost.

However, Dreamhost has done a great job dealing with this. They keep a blog letting you know what’s up with every server, and they’ve released a detailed accounting of what happened and how they’re resolving these problems and making sure they won’t happen again.

A lot of companies would, instead, try to obfuscate and tell you it’s a short problem and quickly resolved. I have to say, that as someone who relies on their services, I much prefer the up-front approach. They’re, effectively, my IT/MIS department, and I appreciate the regular updates.

This is a good lesson for any business or business unit to learn from. If folks are relying on you, they’ll often respond better to advance warning of failure than they will an apology (or, worse still, excuses) after the fact.