When the Dr. Pepper Website, drpepper.com went down on 23 November 2008, many people questioned the company’s intent. Most of the top ten searches on Google led to sites questioning the intent of the company.

In this article, I address the importance of planning ahead and avoiding Web hosting disaster such as what happened to the Dr. Pepper Website, drpepper.com, when the company needed it most.

Following extensive promotions by Dr. Pepper offering a free can of their Dr. Pepper drink if Axl Rose released the album “Chinese Democracy” in 2008, the company intent was questioned. The likely truth is that their Website was too busy to answer the call, but this did not stop the bad press the company received.

The Dr. Pepper’s Website crash is an example of how errors in traffic forecasting and insufficient server and bandwidth resources can come between a company and their customers. Although in some cases, this is very expensive to avoid, requiring additional server and bandwidth cost, it makes this author wonder how the guy in the hot seat is dealing with his stress.

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