Without telling me, my host decided to perform a file system check (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsck) and so now my server is offline for a few hours.
An hour or two ago I began telling dozens of high priority potential clients to check it out... each of which could bring in thousands of dollars per month. About 30 minutes ago I noticed the site was offline... and I'm pretty sure quite a few have tried to look at it since then. None have responded. And I'm afraid they've all gotten a bad first impression, and may never bother to check it out again.
I've sent them all messages informing them of the server maintenance and that it should be back up soon. I'm planning on sending them all another message when it's back up.
This is absolutely infuriating. It feels like 8 months of work just went down the drain because my dumbass host didn't telling me they were going to perform some maintenance.
What can I do to make sure I don't lose these clients?