Screwfix, FYI it's possible to do site maintenance without pulling everything down

It's a nuisance having to take the site down for hours at a time for maintenance work. Most major online retailers manage not to take the site this long by running two servers paralell.

I'm not sure why it's necessary to do so much maintenance. I've been unable to access the website many times now. Noticably so.

 

Ok fair enough, but site getting taken offline is a recurring theme with screwfix. Sites like [major auction site] go offline once in a while but they seem to plan it well and take it offline for an hour or two in midnight. Nobody notices. Screwfix goes offline for maintenance for ages and sometimes during trading hours.

I was once at a screwfix store on a Sunday. Wanted to look up a product online and the mobile website was down for maintenance. techies didn't think about disabling mobile website and redirecting it to the desktop site.

Visited www.screwfix.com, it kept redirected to m.screwfix.com and telling me mobile site was offline for maintenance.