Not strictly a website thing, but it took a client site down for most of a day, so it counts. Phone died, replacement turns up, new iphone cannot restore backup because the last icloud backup predated me moving authenticator apps. Every totp seed for the host, the dns, the registrar and the payment gateway lived in that app and nowhere else.
The site was still fine at that point. It went down at four in the afternoon when a dns change I had queued a week earlier went through wrong, and I couldnt log in to the registrar to pull it back. Their support wanted a passport photo and 48 hours. I got in through a recovery code I had printed in 2022 and shoved in a folder, which is about the only sensible thing my past self has ever done for me.
Recovery codes on paper, in a drawer, for every account that can take a site offline. And test that the restore works while nothing is on fire, rather than finding out on the day.
Source: r/WebsiteHealth · by /u/Latter_B2