Didn't check the game at all last night, however when I tried to login early in the afternoon the site obviously wasn't accessible. It's obvious to experienced players to check IRC - but this shouldn't be the case.
DNS was dead, so I couldn't see the portal (or game) to see any announcements. Any chance of perhaps sorting your DNS so it doesn't die so easily? Also a super cheap server (virtual server?) which serves static content to say "we're down, sorry!" which you can switch to if problems occur.
Failures do happen (regularly it seems
), would be nice if there was a bit more of a backup plan to inform players of any problems instead of relying on everyone to join an IRC channel to get any updates.