I Survived a 3-Site Launch, Server Migration, and a Crowd of Confidently Wrong People

The Setup

This past week, I:

• Launched a combined multistore system with 3 separate storefronts
• Migrated servers, DNS, and emails
• Handled every line of backend, frontend, ops, and deployment
• Had zero help in production
• Was the last one in the office at 00:15, pushing this live

No staging teams.
No DevOps team.
No sysadmin.
Just me.

Marketing Guy Diagnoses DNS (And Escalates to the Boss)

Look. I don’t expect everyone to know how DNS propagation works. But if you don’t, the best move is to ask, not pretend you do.

Instead, I had to hear:

“Users still see the old site because of… cookies.”

Cookies.

Buddy, what do you think cookies are? HTML snapshots of entire sites? Do you think they store server IPs in chocolate chips?

Then came the encore:

“If you used Cloudflare, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

Oh wow — thank you, Edge Caching Oracle. Next time I’m rebuilding three interdependent stores from scratch and migrating servers at midnight, I’ll definitely think:

“You know what this custom OpenCart multistore needs? Cloudflare magic dust.”

And guess what? This genius marketing advice wasn’t just whispered over coffee, no, he had to call the boss and feed him this nonsense. So naturally, the boss called me to grill me about the ‘cookie problem’ I apparently caused.

Thanks for the extra stress, pal. Meanwhile, I’m the one who stayed at the office till 00:15, migrating servers solo, while you were busy… what exactly? Oh right, throwing around tech buzzwords like a toddler with a new toy.

This is exactly why I’m convinced that confidence without knowledge is the most dangerous combo on a team.

“Let’s Install a Plugin”

Oh, and it gets worse.

Another brilliant suggestion:

“We need a cookie consent banner — can’t we just install a plugin?”

Install a plugin.
On a fully customized, multistore e-commerce platform.
That you didn’t write a single line of code for.

You think there’s a WordPress-style plugin that’s going to:

• Work with our dynamic template structure
• Not break anything
• Be GDPR-compliant
• Integrate with custom routing and multi-language logic
• Not inject garbage JS from 2013

Do you also want me to add a Wix widget while I’m at it?

News flash:
Custom software doesn’t have a “just install it” button.

Stop suggesting plugins.
This isn’t Shopify.
You don’t install Stripe via TikTok tutorial.

The Email Meltdown (POP3, My Nemesis)

During the server switch, I migrated emails too.

Because we are still running POP3, the moment devices reconnected to the new server, they redownloaded thousands of messages.

The boss thought something broke.

It didn’t.

That’s just how POP3 works.

SOS Tickets from Hell

I got “SOS” tickets immediately after launch.

Some were valid:

• Missing data edge-cases
• Minor layout bugs under pressure

But others?

Pure clown show:

• “In the Excel export, the decimal is a dot instead of a comma”
• “There’s no ‘Apply’ button in this filter”
• “Video tag looks like a button, it doesn’t work”

These weren’t bugs.
These were nitpicks from people who weren’t here at midnight when this thing went live.

And yet, they scream like the site is down.
It’s always “urgent” when you’re not the one fixing it.

“It Worked on the Test Server”

Don’t even get me started.

“But it worked yesterday on the test server…”

Yeah? Cool.
That test server didn’t:

• Serve real users
• Handle real load
• Use production DNS
• Connect to email
• Get watched by your boss’s boss’s boss

QA passed? Great.
So did the Titanic’s safety inspection.

Mental Health Status: Red

I didn’t just hit my limits — I punched through them.

But I still shipped.
Despite:

• Armchair sysadmins
• Marketing gurus with plugin dreams
• Fake experts quoting blog posts they skimmed
• Real bugs
• Made-up bugs
• Passive-aggressive comments
• A user saying “the old one was better”

You weren’t here at midnight.
You weren’t here at deployment.
You weren’t here when the logs were failing and the database migration froze.

I was.

What Actually Worked

Let’s recap the wins:

• The sites didn’t crash
• The data stayed intact
• The emails were migrated
• The DNS was properly configured
• The multistore logic performed under pressure
• Users bought stuff
• We went live

Was it messy? Hell yes.
But it worked.

Final Thoughts

Some people talk.
Some people ship.

And then there are people like me who ship, listen to the noise, silently clean up, and do it again the next day.

To those who kept asking “Can’t you just…?”
No. I couldn’t just.
Because you don’t “just” in a system you didn’t build.

If you ever feel like you’re going crazy hearing clueless advice from people who wouldn’t know a DNS record from a donut:

You’re not crazy.
You’re just surrounded by confidence without competence.

I launched 3 stores.
I built the system.
I fixed the mess.
I broke myself a little.
But I made it.