Stand‑by microsites exist to become the single, authoritative hub when a crisis breaks. Pre‑approved content, simple navigation, and fast activation keep stakeholders informed without confusion.
What’s the primary job of a dark site or stand‑by microsite when activated?
Serve as the single source of truth with live updates and clear calls to action
Host marketing campaigns to offset negative coverage
Collect leads with pop‑ups during the incident
Replace customer support entirely with FAQs
Which activation choice best avoids conflicting information across channels?
Publish the hub and link to it from social, email, and press notes as the canonical reference
Send statements only to select reporters under embargo
Rely on employee personal accounts for speed
Let each business unit post separate statements on its own pages
While on standby, which setting helps prevent premature discovery by search engines?
Disallow the whole domain permanently in robots.txt
Apply a noindex directive and remove it immediately upon activation
Hide the page behind an image without text
Keep the page password‑free to ‘test user flow’ in the wild
When you update critical copy on the hub, what speeds global propagation of the change?
Wait for organic cache expiry regardless of SLA
Change the page background colour to signal a new version
Email support asking users to refresh their browsers
Trigger an immediate CDN cache purge for the affected paths
Which content set belongs on the first screen of an activated crisis hub?
Plain‑language summary, current impact, actions for customers, and time of next update
A carousel of brand ads and recent awards
Speculative root causes, unvetted screenshots, and internal chat excerpts
Only a press contact email with no status information
What technical choice reduces activation lag when switching traffic to the hub?
Rely solely on organic search to surface the page
Hard‑code links across hundreds of pages the moment a crisis starts
Pre‑provision a dedicated subdomain or path and keep TTLs and routing ready to switch
Register a brand‑new domain after activation
Which accessibility step is recommended for crisis hubs?
Hide transcripts to discourage media reuse
Post text as images to preserve brand typography
Auto‑play background video to draw attention
Use readable layouts, alt text, and captions so critical updates reach all users
For analytics on a crisis hub, which approach is most appropriate?
Gate content until users accept marketing cookies
Use privacy‑respecting GA4 or equivalent with minimal events to monitor reach and fix issues
Install multiple legacy analytics tags in parallel
Disable all measurement to avoid any data collection
Which security control is prudent when activating a high‑traffic hub?
Turn off TLS termination for performance
Whitelist every IP to avoid false positives
Expose staging endpoints ‘for transparency’
Enable WAF protections and rate‑limiting to maintain availability
What should every social post do once the hub is live?
Link to the hub and keep replies consistent with that page
Publish differing details per platform to ‘fit the tone’
Rely on auto‑generated previews with no context
Debate critics from the brand handle
Starter
Build your crisis fundamentals: clear hubs, stakeholder priorities, and safe approvals.
Solid
You’re applying strong practices—tighten routing, cadence, and localisation choices.
Expert!
Outstanding command—your dark sites, maps, and bridges can stand up to real firestorms.
