what went right

A large, fast-moving client spent about $80K with us to create their website (a pretty large web job for us). The client was constantly changing their mind and very difficult to manage as we approached the live date (props to e-Claire and Jerrie, they made it work), but come late afternoon we had everything together and working properly - Yay!

The client was nervous about security, and insisted on hosting the site themselves on internal servers that we didn't have access to. So, when development was completed we zipped the whole thing up and let them download all the site files. We were using ColdFusion and some Access databases to power the dynamic parts of the site. I was a little nervous about this, as they did not have any internal talent to work with CF, but I walked them through the install and configuration and everything seemed hunky-dory.

The files transferred, we did some testing and - amazing - everything worked. Their site was ready to go live, and they were flipping the switch at midnight. These guys were east coast and were two hours later than us.

By 5 PM there was much celebrating on our side and we all went home. Mission accomplished.

what went wrong

To this day, I have no idea what went wrong. All I remember is getting a call from the client and his tech guy at 2 AM (which is 4 AM for them - ouch) with bad news: the site is broken. Crisis time.

Now, this was shortly after the birth of my daughter, so you need to understand that I was already under the influence of heavy sleep deprivation. Compared to the cry of a hungry baby, a middle-of-the-night phone call was barely registering with me. My wife answered the phone and woke me up.

All I really remember is that the client's tech guy decided to play with the ColdFusion configuration (which was working in the afternoon tests) for some reason. To troubleshoot the issue, I would ask him some questions, and then he would click around trying to figure out the answer for me.

the problem

Of course, while he was clicking around, I would fall back asleep. This made effective communication difficult - by the time he would get the answer to my question and wake me back up ("OK, John? John? JOHN!" - "Wha... OK") I had forgotten the question he was answering, or even my line of thinking about the problem they were trying to address. Tech guy: "Alright, the checkbox on the admin screen is checked." Me: "So?" Tech Guy: "You wanted to know..." Me: "Oh. Yeah."

Apparently we managed to solve the problem. I woke up in the morning snuggled up with the phone, and no client was on the other end. A quick check of the site revealed its functional status. Everyone was happy, the client's tech guy was sacked, and apparently I'd saved the day.

I have no idea how.