Draft:the vendor contacts and response targets below are drafted from each vendor's public support model. Confirm the exact escalation contacts and SLAs with the FFC founder before relying on them during a real incident.
This runbook consolidates the scattered escalation paths into one place: how to classify an incident, which vendor owns it, and when to pull in FFC leadership.
Severity matrix
| Level | What it means | Examples | First response |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | Critical — site/email down for a live charity | Site returns 5xx, domain not resolving, all mail bouncing, suspected compromise. | Immediately. Notify the FFC founder in parallel with the vendor. |
| P2 | High — major function broken, no full outage | Forms failing, SSL warning, one mailbox down, deploy pipeline broken. | Same business day. |
| P3 | Medium — degraded or non-urgent | Slow pages, a broken link, a plugin warning, a single user access issue. | Within 2 business days. |
| P4 | Low — cosmetic or informational | Copy tweaks, enhancement requests, questions. | Best effort / next cycle. |
Vendor escalation paths
| Vendor | Owns | How to escalate |
|---|---|---|
| InterServer / Hostinger (hosting) | Origin host, cPanel, server uptime. | Host control-panel support ticket + live chat; phone for outages. |
| Cloudflare (DNS / CDN / SSL) | DNS resolution, proxy, SSL, WAF. | Cloudflare dashboard support; community + docs for config. Paid plans add priority support. |
| Microsoft 365 (email / identity) | Mailboxes, Entra/Conditional Access, licensing. | M365 admin center → Support; nonprofit support channel where eligible. |
| WPMU DEV (WordPress plugins/support) | Managed WordPress plugin stack and support. | WPMU DEV hub support tickets / live chat. |
| eNom / domain registrar | Domain registration, transfers, ICANN verification. | Registrar/reseller support via the FFC WHMCS hub. |
FFC internal escalation
- Global Admin threshold: if a volunteer or admin cannot resolve an issue, escalate to the FFC founder when it is unresolved within 48 hours (sooner for P1).
- P1 incidents: notify the founder immediately, in parallel with the vendor — do not wait for the 48-hour threshold.
- Founder escalation contact: Clarke Moyer (FFC founder) — clarkemoyer@freeforcharity.org, 520-222-8104.
Cross-references
- wordpress-hosting-techstack — the layered stack so you know which vendor owns a given failure.
- wordpress-web-hosting — host-level operations.