Filippo Tinnirello
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How I Handle Urgent Bug Fixes (The "Red Phone")

Sites break. It's a fact of life. What matters is the response time and the fix. My process for managing emergencies.

February 13, 2026 Incident Response

Panic is contagious. My job is to be the vaccine. When you call me with an emergency, my first step is to assess calmly.

1. Triage: Is it Down or Just Broken?

I classify issues into three tiers:

  • Tier 1 (Critical): Site is down, checkout is broken. Response: Immediate (within 1-2 hours).
  • Tier 2 (Major): Visual bug on homepage, form not submitting. Response: Same day.
  • Tier 3 (Minor): Typo, color change. Response: Scheduled maintenance (24-48h).

2. The "Emergency Lane"

I keep 10% of my weekly capacity open for emergencies. This means I don't have to stop another client's project to fix yours; I have space reserved for it.

3. The Fix Process

  1. Reproduce: Confirm the bug.
  2. Isolate: Use Staging environment (never debug on Production if possible).
  3. Fix: Apply patch.
  4. Verify: Test across devices.
  5. Deploy: Push to live.

4. Prevention (Post-Mortem)

After the fire is out, we discuss why it started. Was it a bad plugin update? A server issue? I implement safeguards to prevent recurrence.

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