Did your website just go down? Maybe it is time to build a new one.

This afternoon the National Security Agency put out a warning about a piece of software called PHP. You have never heard of it, and that is fine. What matters is this: most small business websites are built on it, including nearly every site built with WordPress, and a lot of people reading this have a WordPress site and do not know it.

Two serious holes were found in that software. Through them, a stranger on the internet can take over a website without a password. The fix came out the same day. But the fix does not install itself. Somebody has to do it, and for most small businesses that somebody is a hosting company you pay a few dollars a month to, or a web person you hired years ago and have not spoken to since.

The warning was blunt. Fix it today, or take the website down until you can.

Here is what to do, and it takes one email. Find whoever looks after your website. If you do not know, it is whoever you pay for it, and the name is on your credit card statement. Send them this:

I saw the government warning on 21 October about PHP. Is my website on a fixed version yet? If not, when will it be?

A good host has already done it and will say so. A good web person will check and tell you. If nobody answers, or nobody knows, that is your answer too, and the warning stands: better a site that is down for a day than one a stranger is inside.

Now the part we actually care about. The site you are reading right now cannot be hit by this. Not because we are clever, but because there is nothing to hit. It is a folder of files. No software running behind it, no login page for someone to break, no plugins that quietly go stale. We still look after the account it lives in, the way you look after your bank login. But a warning like the one on 21 October does not apply to it, and it never will.

That is how websites used to be made, before page builders, and AI has made it the easy way again. You say what you want on the page. The AI writes the files. You keep them. No monthly fee to a builder, no web person you cannot reach, no afternoon like this one.

We teach you to do that, one-on-one, for your business, not a one size fits all. Stop buying. Start building.