Week 35 — A city council's event site went live, and 36 domains had lapsed

I checked 95 client domains, past and present. 36 had lapsed. Our monitoring had spotted some of them, but its alert emails were never arriving.

From the archive: my week of 24–30 Aug 2026, written up later from my notes. Short version.

changes a city council asked for, all shipped and checked live

people on my SabahGuide newsletter, up 7 this week

36/95

client domains, past and present, that had lapsed

0→1

first Instagram Reel on my florist's account, after 118 posts

No phone photo this week, so here's the new advertise page. It shows today's live numbers, not August's.

Wins

Client

A city council's event site went live

26 changes made, the full film with sound, and venue galleries. Live on Saturday. See the site →

SabahGuide

Sabah This Week #009 sent

Went out to all 67 subscribers on Thursday morning, plus 12 social posts drafted from it. Read it →

SabahGuide

An advertise page with live numbers

Businesses can now see how many people read SabahGuide's newsletter, counted live, before they pay. See the page →

Happy Florist

The first Reel, after 118 posts

My florist's Instagram had 118 posts and no Reels. The first one went out on Sunday. Happy Florist →

What broke, and how I fixed it

The host said it was Cloudflare

BrokeA supply base's website went down. The hosting company blamed Cloudflare.

FixCloudflare's own status page showed no problem at that time, and the server logs showed visitors never reached the server. Back up the same day, and still up three days later.

Do thisWhen a vendor gives you an excuse, check it against their own status page.

Deployed, but not live

BrokeA city council site's new video failed to upload twice with no error. The old clip kept playing.

FixThe file was over the size limit. Shrank it from 33 MB to 23 MB and checked the live page plays the new one.

Do this"Deployed" doesn't mean live. Open the page and look.

Alerts nobody received

Broke36 of 95 client domains had lapsed. Our monitoring had flagged 8, but its alert emails were broken.

FixChecked every domain's registration and flagged the lapsed ones and those about to expire.

Do thisSend yourself a test alert. An alert nobody gets is the same as no alert.

Where my week went

40 hourscalendar, Sun–Sat

23% building new things77% client work and admin

A city council event site16.2h

SabahGuide3.5h

Happy Florist2.4h

A state agency website2.2h

Client domain check-up2.0h

Everything else13.7h

If you do one thing this week

Ask your web person: "When does our domain renew, and is auto-renew on?"

That was my week. How was yours? Tell me on LinkedIn or in the comments on Substack.