11 True Tales from the Crypt: Website Horror Stories

October 19, 2022

Around here, we love Halloween, and what’s Spooky Season without a few scary stories?

In my over 23 years of website development, I’ve collected several stories that will make your skin crawl. From sites that just won’t die to havoc-wreaking hackers, we’ve seen just about everything. Let’s explore some of the scariest. 

• The Donated Zombie Site
• Frankenstein’s Website
• The Great Website Hacking of 2014
• The Sickly Student Site
• The Ghostly Volunteer 
• The Dead Developer Website
• The Domain of Ill Repute
• The Vicious Vampire Hacker
• The Bait and Witch
• The Russian Reaper
• The Mad Scientist’s Website

The Donated Zombie Site

Many years ago, we inherited a client who already had a website. We had to work in this spooky, evil site for years until, finally, the client got a grant to pay for a new website from us. MayeCreate would be paid to build them the website of their dreams. But then, the evil marketing company from across town swooped in and said the feared words of every other marketing company, “I want to donate a website.”

*Imagine a loud Dun, dun DUN here*

One year later, the website was still not done, and it never worked the way it was supposed to. It just kind of existed without really living up to its full potential. Sadly, that led us to our next problem…

Frankenstein’s Website

MayeCreate had to finish this website we hadn’t started, which turned it into Frankenstein’s website. It had so many developers in it, no one knew where anything was. Bits and pieces were built by different people. None of it was ever intended to work together in the monstrous form it took. 

And now, before any MayeCreate employee touches the monster, they have to be fully trained and ingratiated into the website torture chamber. 

The Great Website Hacking of 2014

Our next tortured tale takes us all the way back to the Great Website Hacking of 2014. 

Once upon a time, the fearless leader of MayeCreate, Monica Pitts, had a baby. When she went on maternity leave, everyone who had not updated their websites to the most recent version of WordPress suffered severe consequences. 

You see, back then, we let clients choose to have us update their site or do it themselves. When we asked, we had a whole bunch of clients say, “Oh, we don’t want to pay money. We’ll update the software.” None of them did, so they all got hacked. Because I was on maternity leave, my staff had to work tirelessly, hour after hour, to unhack the websites. 

The Sickly Student Site

Back when I was first getting started, I was hired as an intern and had to build a website for a company. I built a website that had a gazillion pages on it, but I didn’t know how to build a template. I didn’t know there was a thing called a template. I do now. 

For anyone who currently doesn’t know, the template is what makes every page look the same on the website. 

I build the site, blissfully unaware of what I don’t know. Then, my boss came to me and said, “Monica, we want to change the name of this button that is on every single page.” I had to change the name of the button by hand on every single page of the website because I did not know how to find and replace it. It was awful. Then I figured out what PHP was and built websites better from that day forward.

Does that sound scary or what? 

The Ghostly Volunteer

We hear this next tale from the crypt way too often – nonprofits and companies whose volunteers have ghosted them. They volunteer to build or maintain the website, and then…poof. Gone, leaving you cold, scared about what comes next, and wondering if they were ever actually there in the first place. 

The Dead Developer Website

What do you do when your website volunteers have turned into ghosts? Typically, call your developer. But what do you do when they’ve apparently dropped dead because they no longer answer the phone? 

It’s a scary story we’ve heard from several of our clients, which makes us wonder, is someone out there offing website developers? 

The Domain of Ill Repute

The next ghost story is the Domain of Ill Repute. This particular client allowed their domain name to expire, and then it was swept up by a hacker and turned into a pornography site. This domain name was still on every brochure and business card for the company. All of them had to be reprinted because all of their clients were going to make appointments. At the pornography site.

Moral of this story? Don’t let your domain name expire. 

The Vicious Vampire Hacker

Once upon a time, a hacker was so smart. It came in through an un-updated plugin. And this plugin just happened to be a plugin that sends emails. This website would re-inject the hacking code out through the website over and over again. So we could never be un-hacked, and it could only be rebuilt. 

Keep your plugins updated. People, keep them updated. It’s so important. 

The Bait and Witch

There was a lawyer who hired a web developer. The developer promised to build a beautiful, custom website. But then, the lawyer saw their exact website for another law company. 

Of course, they felt like their website had been stolen. In actuality, the web developer had bought a template and not built a custom website at all. How did I discover this? I looked in the code, and it was written a specific way with the name of the template inside every single style in the website code. 

It was the same on both websites. Then, I found the for sale website with the same code in it—Detective Monica to the rescue. 

The Russian Reaper 

One of our clients sells amazing vaccines for animals. One day, a Russian hacker logged into their site and injected Russian words into the website. I’ll be honest. We didn’t notice for a few days because the Russian words didn’t look that different from the highly technical language on the site. But, we did find them all, removed them and restored the original website. 

The Mad Scientist’s Website

Our final tale takes place once upon a time, many, many moons ago, on a dark and stormy night on a nearly deserted road. In the back of someone’s admin section, a client logged in and changed all the settings in their admin section, making their website disappear. To make matters worse, they had just sent out a huge email telling everyone to visit their website, which was now a shell of what it once was. 

In the end, it was okay, we revived the website for them and everything was fine. But we’re confident they felt a cold sweat and tingle up their back when they realized what they had done. 

Those, my friends, are true tales from the website crypt. We hope with this horror in your heart, you can run forward, have an awesome Halloween, and, of course, go forth and market with purpose.