You have an excellent point because I too host websites for hundreds of people and have been in the middle of a disaster. It's hard to keep updating a blog, but I got around to it about every hour regardless. Usually it just said what I was working on and that nothing had changed. Two sentences, but everyone knew what was going on. I also changed my outgoing voice mail recording which helped a ton. Most people didn't even leave messages.

It's REALLY hard, but well worth it in the end because you get praise for your communication instead of hate mail for abandoning your customers.