My portfolio site crashed during a big client call yesterday

I was showing my work to a potential client over Zoom and my whole Squarespace site just went down. The loading screen spun for a full minute before giving a 503 error. I had to scramble to pull up PDFs from my desktop while trying to sound professional. It happened right as I was about to show my main branding project from last month. Has anyone else had their host fail at the worst possible time? What's a more reliable platform you'd suggest for a portfolio?

3 comments

3 Comments

averymitchell2mo ago

That sounds like a nightmare scenario. Squarespace has good templates but their uptime isn't perfect. I switched to hosting my portfolio on a separate service from my main website provider for this exact reason. A static site generator with a simple hosting service can be far more reliable. It takes more setup work upfront, but you never get those surprise crashes during a call.

patg922mo ago

Did you try a static site with a separate host for better uptime?

leebrown6d ago

Yeah that static site idea is solid. I know a guy who uses Jekyll with Netlify and his site never goes down, even during big traffic spikes. Way less chance of a surprise crash when you're not relying on one company's servers for everything.