You know the feeling when you go to a site and you see that dreaded message. There are other messages, such as directory listings, that equally indicate something is wrong if not as dismaying. The thoughts processes scurry through

1. Is this a site I have trusted up to now?
2. Who sent me this link that I am now at?
3. Is my internet connection now compromised?
4. What has happened to my web-site?

The initial answer, for milder messages, would be that the known site is presently being maintained. Heaven knows in today’s 24×7 world it is hard enough for web-site operators to get site up dates in smoothly without affecting anyone’s browsing experience. As with most things, if anything goes wrong with the upgrades, the maintenance window stretches out. An efficient operator should put up a ‘things have gone wrong – come back later’ sign as soon as they realise there is a problem.

A link sent by a friend or colleague would need to be evaluated in terms of the relationship. If the result of the click is not what is expected, or preferably even before used if it is not a high trust relationship, do a search on the key part of of the domain to see what, if anything, has been reported on that link. Or just avoid all links that you do not classify as 100% immediately, which can be hard in today’s world of networking.

It is less likely that your connection is compromised, especially if you are using active and up to date firewalls and virus scanners. If you have recently used the site and it is being reported as an attack page it is worth going through your security audit check, i.e. full virus scan, full malware scan (not necessarily the same thing as a virus scan), port scan. Depending on any information you may have input into the site, a full password review may also be in order.

Now, the most dire prospect of those listed is if it is your own web-site. Which will lead to more scurrying thoughts

1. Your website hoster is reliable and offers communication service at this very moment. If your site administration password has been changed you will not be able to get in to regain control.
2. You have a ‘please be patient – back shortly’ page ready for installation.
3. Even if you are using a service (i.e. blogspot.com or another web-site is hosting your content or profile) you have up to date copies of all content so that you can reupload it at a moment’s notice.
4. If you are using any software on your site that requires an administration type log in, it probably is using a database. You will probably need to be able to create all databases from the last back up copy you have, which you took lately, right? And that back up is in a format you can use, for instance having a gzip backup on a web-site that does not have gzipping abilities is useless.

Trusting that your site is never in the position of giving your competition free hits.