Standby Website: a static copy for the outage
When your site has to go offline — a critical PHP flaw, a hack, an outage at your host — we switch a finished static copy live. You stay reachable and you keep your rankings.
hechenbros sets up standby websites: a complete static copy of your site, held on separate hosting with no PHP, that goes live within minutes when the original has to go offline — a critical PHP flaw, a hack, an outage at your host, or an update that broke everything. Selling is the one thing the copy cannot do. Staying reachable and holding on to your rankings it can do in full.
Tell us where your domain is managed and how many pages are indexed. That is enough to say whether a switch in minutes is realistic.
What you get
Minutes instead of days
The copy sits ready on separate hosting with no PHP. Switching is a DNS change, not a rescue operation on your server.
Rankings stay where they are
Every URL still answers with 200 — same title, same text, same structured data. Google never sees an outage.
Reachable for customers
Opening hours, locations, programme, prices, phone number and WhatsApp stay online even when nothing is running behind them.
Who this is for
Shops and booking sites
Every hour without a site costs measurable money. The copy cannot sell, but staying findable and callable is the difference between a delayed order and a lost one.
Businesses with a location
Cinema, restaurant, practice, workshop, hotel. Opening hours, address and phone number are what people are looking for, and a static copy carries all of it.
Sites with organic traffic
If a large share of your enquiries comes through Google, a multi-day outage costs you twice — while it lasts and afterwards.
Agencies
A quiet service in the background for your client portfolio. We set it up and do the switch; the client relationship stays with you.
Your site has to go offline. Then what?
On 18 October 2026 the website of a large Austrian cinema chain carried a notice saying it had been taken offline for urgent security maintenance, referring to the reported PHP flaws CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619. Programme, location pages and ticket sales were all unreachable — and that was before a fix had even been published. Not because the site had been hacked, but because switching it off was the only answer that reliably worked. That case is not exotic. It is the normal case, in five variants.
A flaw in the foundation
A flaw in the PHP interpreter affects every PHP site, whatever its plugins and theme. Patching is the host's job. Until they do it, switching off is the only answer that is certain to work.
Hacked and still online
Modified files, unknown administrators, a warning in Google's results. Cleaning up takes hours, and during those hours the site is better off unreachable.
An outage at your host
A data centre, a database or a hosting panel goes down. None of it is yours to repair, and nobody gives you a time you can rely on.
An update breaks the site
After a plugin or PHP update all that is left is a white screen. A rollback takes minutes, sometimes hours, and a usable backup is not always there.
The improvised maintenance page
Built under pressure in ten minutes: one sentence, no phone number, no opening hours, and the same thing on every single URL — at exactly the moment customers are looking for something.
Google remembers the outage
A short, correct 503 does no harm — Google comes back and tries again. By the second and third day those retries turn into real errors, URLs drop out of the index, and getting back takes weeks.
Two details are enough to start: where your domain is managed, and whether the site sells, takes bookings or only informs.
What the copy can do — and what it cannot
A static copy has no PHP and no database. That is exactly what makes it fast and impossible to compromise, and it is exactly where it stops. So that nothing surprises you during an incident, this comes before the price rather than after it in small print.
Content in full
Every page, text, image, price, opening hour and piece of structured data, exactly as the original has it. No selection, no short version.
Contact keeps working
Phone, WhatsApp and email stay where they were. Forms run through an endpoint that needs no PHP, so enquiries still arrive.
No selling
No basket, no checkout, no booking, no availability lookup. Product pages stay readable and findable; the buy button becomes a call, a WhatsApp message or a visit to the shop.
No logged-in areas
The admin, the customer account and any membership area do not exist on the standby copy. Those addresses show the notice with its as-of date, not a 404.
How it works
Take stock
We count what there is to copy — every URL in the sitemap and every URL Search Console knows about — and note the forms, the logged-in areas, where the domain is managed and how high the DNS TTL is set.
Prepare the DNS
The precondition, said plainly: the DNS has to sit where it can be switched in minutes, with a low TTL. If it sits with an outside IT department that needs a ticket first, minutes become hours — and we tell you that up front instead of promising otherwise.
Build the copy
A full pass over the site produces static HTML on separate hosting with no PHP. Buy buttons are rerouted, the notice banner is prepared, and addresses with no static equivalent get their answer.
Test switch
One real switch over and back, logged and timed. Before that, nobody knows whether it works. After it, it is a number you know.
Scheduled refresh
The copy is rebuilt on a schedule, so it is not showing two-month-old prices when it is needed. Every rebuild runs through the same checklist as the first one.
When it happens
A call or a message is enough and we switch over within business hours. You also hold the procedure yourself, so you do not depend on us being reachable.
Better to switch over once on a quiet Tuesday than for the first time during an incident.
What gets checked before the switch
A copy that goes live and damages your own search visibility is worse than the outage it was meant to cover. So every copy runs through the same checklist, at setup and at every refresh. For the first item we use the check that runs daily over our own site.
Every URL answers with 200
Every address from the sitemap and from Search Console is requested and compared against the original's title and heading. A page that is missing shows up here, not later in the index.
No noindex, no Disallow
The most dangerous mistake in this product: a staging environment carrying its noindex or its Disallow along into production. That is checked on every rebuild, not once at setup.
Canonicals and hreflang unchanged
Self-referencing canonicals, language alternates and redirects stay exactly as the original set them. Both versions are never reachable at the same time, so there is no duplicate content either.
Sitemap and robots.txt from the copy
Both are served along with it, so a crawler on the standby copy finds the same map it had before.
Addresses written the same way
Trailing slashes, capitalisation, language paths. A copy that writes addresses differently creates redirect chains and loses signals.
Notice banner with an as-of date
A prepared notice on every page says that work is going on behind the scenes and what date the content is from. No drama, no paragraph of apology.
What a prepared copy saves you
The value is not in the technology — a crawl is no great feat. It is that the decision has already been made before you have to make it under pressure.
Switching off becomes an option
With a copy in place you can sit out a critical flaw without choosing between risk and revenue. That is the real gain.
Visibility stays
A steady 200 instead of error pages. What you built up in rankings over years does not hang on your host's patching schedule.
Enquiries still arrive
Phone, WhatsApp and the form keep working. For a business with a physical location that is most of the business that would otherwise stop.
A clean stage during a hack
A copy with no PHP cannot be taken over. While the compromised installation is being cleaned up, something above suspicion is online.
A first step away from PHP
Three days of being served statically without incident is the trial run for a migration — and a solid basis for the conversation about one.
Frequently asked
How fast is the switch really?
That depends on the DNS, not on us. If the domain sits somewhere we can manage with a low TTL, it is minutes. If it sits with an outside IT department that needs a ticket first, it can be hours. Which case applies to you is something we establish before setup, not during an incident.
What does a standby website cost?
CHF 490 once for the setup including the first test switch, then CHF 39 a month for hosting, the scheduled refresh and one test switch per quarter. From the middle care plan upwards the standby website is included.
Can I keep selling on the standby copy?
No, and that is the most important limit of this offer. A static copy has no database, so no basket, no checkout and no booking. Product pages stay fully readable and in search results; the buy button leads to a phone call, WhatsApp or the shop.
Is a simple maintenance page with a 503 not enough?
For half a day it is entirely enough — that is what the 503 is for and Google handles it correctly. By the second or third day it tips over: retries turn into errors, URLs disappear from the index, and recovery is a matter of weeks. A standby website pays off for the long cases, not the short ones.
Does the copy create duplicate content?
No, because the two versions are never reachable at the same time. It is the same domain with the same addresses and a different server behind them. The self-referencing canonicals stay as they are.
Do you need access to my DNS?
Either that, or someone on your side who can change a DNS record within minutes. Without one of the two we cannot commit to a switching time, and in that case we would rather tell you in advance that the offer does not hold what it promises for you.
How current is the content on the copy?
As current as the last scheduled rebuild, and the notice banner states that date openly. How often it is rebuilt follows how often things change on your side — more often for a shop with daily price changes than for a site that is touched twice a year.
Does this work without WordPress?
Yes. What gets copied is what the server delivers, not what drives it. Joomla, TYPO3, Shopware or a hand-written PHP site all work the same way. The more functionality is loaded in the browser through APIs, the more of it is missing from the copy — we look at that when taking stock.
What happens to my forms?
They keep working, just without PHP. We reroute the contact form to an endpoint that works without your server and put phone and WhatsApp visibly next to it. Complex multi-step forms get reduced to the essentials in the process.
What about /wp-admin and the customer account?
Those addresses do not exist on the standby copy, but they should not lead nowhere either. Instead they show the same notice with its as-of date. A 404 on an address that normally works would only confuse a crawler.
Will visitors notice they are on the copy?
They see a notice banner and, if they try to buy or sign in, a message instead of the function. Everything else looks the way it always does, because they are the same pages. That is the whole point.
Have the copy ready before you need it.
Setup, a test switch and a number you know — instead of an improvised maintenance page at 11 at night.
