The tragedy at Virginia Tech is a horrific, unforgettable event. My heart and prayers go out to all the family and friends affected by the hell they are going through.

Earlier this week, Tim O'Keeffe and Michael Clendenin both talked about VT’s response to the crisis and mused about the use of a second website or ‘dark site’ for crisis communications. The killings and the ensuing confusion of fearful parents and family was accentuated by the loss of the school’s website in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. One only hopes that VT was only not prepared for the potential spike in traffic and that the crowds of concerned visitors crashed the website (for it would have been an extraordinarily bad decision to have made the conscious decision to pull down the website voluntarily during such a crisis).

In short, there were likely many tens-of-thousands of concerned people attempting to access the VT website for more information on the tragedy – and likely were hoping to glean some information about a loved one. The website though was not available.

A secondary or ‘dark site’ that could be published quickly in a crisis to communicate breaking news and information would not have solved this dilemma. Proper infrastructure planning and hosting could only have prevented a site collapse. If the university lacked the ability to publish information to the home page and therefore decided to turn-off the website, then shame on them. With modern content management and near instantaneous publishing capabilities for even the lowest-tech luddites, VT wouldn’t require a special dark site to communicate details of the unfolding tragedy. The university would merely publish information to the website as it became available and provide links from the home page and media center. For example, after I write this column in MS-Word, it takes about 60 seconds to publish it live (but I could do it in as little as 20 seconds).

Dark sites have their place and purpose, and are particularly valuable in large, planned and complex events (such as a merger or acquisition), but the use of a dark site for crisis communications has largely been supplanted by modern publishing technology and the advanced content management system. Every organization should have a crisis communications plan, and every organization should be able to publish very quickly as the need arises. Furthermore, in the event of a crisis and a landslide of unexpected traffic, it is wise to plan in advance with your website host to ensure they can accommodate large spikes in traffic should the event arise.