As I race around the Web each morning looking for the latest in news and other interesting stuff, I'm increasingly finding that even some of the most mainstream of sites are not always working properly.

This morning, the very popular news.cnet.com was unavailable due to server problems and Australia's ZDNet.com.au was stalling for several minutes because a required Javascript file wasn't loading.

Even local sites have been struck down with problems and outages. Since Christmas I've spied problems at: The NZ Herald (screenshot), Domainz (screenshot) and Sky TV (plenty of prior evidence has been displayed here).

Readers Say (updated hourly) Nothing Yet Have Your Say

Okay, so it's the time of year when many operations may be running a little short-staffed as people take their annual holidays -- but I'd noticed this worrying trend long before Christmas.

Could it be that since the downturn in the Net economy, companies simply aren't prepared to dedicate the levels of resource required to guarantee 24/7 operation?

Or is it perhaps that websites are, through necessity, becoming more complex and dynamic.

There's not much that can go wrong with a static HTML webpage -- but once you start adding complex database queries and dynamic content, even small programming errors can have catastrophic results.

The problem is that, at a time when most Net ventures are finding the going to be particularly hard, running a flaky website is not going to help at all.

Are things going to get worse as even more complex technologies such as .NET begin to make an appearance?

Have your say (remember to select For Publication if you want to see your comments on this page).

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