WEB HOSTING HELP
Website Down or Not Working? How to Check It and What to Do Next
Find out in 5 minutes whether your website is down for everyone or just for you, what usually causes an outage, and what your host should be doing about it.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253
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A website that is down or not working costs you calls, forms and sales every hour it stays that way. The hard part is that an outage rarely announces its cause. The page just will not load, or it loads with an error nobody on your team understands.
We have run our own Houston web hosting servers since 1998, and most outages come from the same short list of causes. This page walks through the checks our in-house team runs: confirm the site is really down, find the cause, get it back up, and keep it from happening again. Downtime is one of the common website problems we fix, and the easiest to prevent.
Watch: So Who Owns your Domain?
Down for everyone or just you?
Is my website down, or is it just me?
When someone says your website is not working, first find out whether it is down for everyone or only for that person. The answer tells you where the issue lives.
- Try it on a phone off Wi-Fi. If the site loads on cellular data but not at the office, the problem is the office network or a DNS cache, not the website.
- Use an outside checker. A website availability tool tests the site from several locations. If every location fails, it is a real outage. Status sites such as Downdetector track big platforms like Google or Microsoft, but rarely a small business website.
- Read the error. “Server not found” points to DNS. A 500 error points to the server or a plugin. A security warning points to an expired SSL certificate. A 503 often means server overload.
- Check your email. Hosts and domain registrars send a notice before a domain or SSL certificate expires. Those emails often went to someone who left the company.
- Check the admin login. If you can still log in to WordPress, the server is fine and a plugin or theme is the likely cause. If the login page is gone too, it is the server, the domain or DNS.
Move fast. Beth tells every class that if she cannot open a page, Google cannot rank it either. If it is down for everyone, call your host. If you host with us, call 713-703-3030 and a person on our in-house team answers.
The usual causes
Why is my website down? The causes we see most
Most website outages come from a short list of causes. Each one has a different fix, which is why guessing wastes hours.
- A bad update. A WordPress plugin, theme or core update breaks the site with an error or a white screen. This is the most common cause we see, usually right after someone clicked “update all” without a backup.
- Server problems. A crashed server, a full disk or a host that throttles your site when traffic spikes. A good host does not shut you off because you got busy; some budget hosts do exactly that.
- DNS issues. The records that point your domain to the server were changed, deleted or never moved when you switched hosts. The website is fine; nobody can find it.
- Expired domain or SSL certificate. Browsers block a site with an expired SSL certificate, and an expired domain stops resolving at all.
- Hacks and attacks. Malware, a defaced home page, visitors redirected to a pharmacy page, or a flood of traffic that knocks the server over.
- Server misconfiguration. A setting on a shared server can hide most of your site from the outside world. We once moved a site off a big-name host because Google could only see its home page. On our server it came right back to life.
- Bad neighbors. On a crowded shared server, if the site next door sends spam, the server’s reputation drops and your email and traffic suffer with it.
A site that is slow, hacked or unstable is usually a hosting problem first. Our full service web hosting with security page explains what a host should do to prevent most of these, and the website slow, hacked or down page covers the diagnosis in more depth.
First 30 minutes
What should I do first when my website goes down?
The order matters. Owners lose whole days because they jump to step 4 before step 1.
- Write down the time and the exact error. Take a screenshot. Your host will ask.
- Ask what changed. A plugin update, a DNS edit, a new email provider, a lapsed card on file. Nearly every outage follows a change.
- Call your host before you touch anything. A real host can see the server logs, the disk, the firewall and the DNS zone. You cannot. If the problem is on their end, nothing inside WordPress will fix it.
- If it was an update, roll it back. Restore the backup you made before the update, or have your host restore theirs. Do not keep updating other things hoping one of them fixes it.
- Confirm the site is clean before it goes back up. Restoring the same infected files after a hack puts you right back where you started.
What not to do: do not start a redesign because the site went down, and do not change hosts in a panic mid-outage. A site has to go from point A to point B correctly, with the domain, DNS, email and files all accounted for, or you trade one problem for three.
Check it yourself
Check it yourself in 5 minutes
Domain, DNS and SSL
Did my domain or SSL certificate expire?
This is the outage that feels like a mystery and turns out to be a missed email. Your domain is a piece of property. Beth has taught that line for years because she keeps meeting owners who find out, the day the site goes dark, that the domain is registered to a former web designer, a former employee or an email address nobody checks.
- Know who owns your domain. Log in to the registrar yourself. The registrant should be your business, not your developer. If you cannot log in, fix that this week.
- Put the right contact email on it. Renewal notices go to the address on file. If that person left, the notices left with them.
- Turn on auto renew and lock the domain. Then put the renewal date in your phone anyway. We renew our own domains for the longest term allowed so a missed notice can never take the business offline.
- Do not pay for an SSL certificate you do not need. A standard SSL certificate should come with your hosting at no charge. We stopped charging for them years ago because every site has to have one. If yours lapsed, ask your host why renewal was not automatic.
- Check both versions of your address. With and without “www” are two separate DNS entries. If one works and the other does not, a record is missing or pointed at the wrong place.
DNS edits are the other trap. Verifying Google Search Console, moving email or switching hosts all touch DNS, and a wrong edit can take the site or the email down for hours. Our domain management service exists so one team watches the registration, the DNS zone and the renewal dates together.
Your insurance policy
Do I have a backup of my website, and where is it?
A backup is the difference between a 1 hour outage and a rebuild from scratch. Most owners assume the host has one. Ask harder questions than that.
- Most hosts back up for their disaster, not yours. A typical host keeps a backup for a catastrophic server failure, not so you can undo a plugin update that broke your checkout on Tuesday.
- Never store the backup on the same server as the website. Beth puts it bluntly: if the machine catches fire, your backup is on the machine that is on fire. The backup belongs in cloud storage you can reach without your host’s help.
- Back up before every major change. A plugin install, a theme change, a WordPress core update or a bulk edit of 700 products all need a backup first. A typo fix does not.
- Keep a clean copy. Some hacks inject code into the database that spreads through every table. That kind of site cannot be cleaned, only restored from a backup made before the hack.
- Test the restore. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan. A good backup system restores a WordPress site in about an hour, and that same system is how we move sites between servers.
Backups come standard with our WordPress hosting plans and are stored off the web server. For more, read why everyone needs a backup plan for their website.
Know before your customers do
How do I know my website is down before my customers tell me?
Most owners learn about downtime from a customer, hours after it started. An uptime monitor fixes that. It checks your site every few minutes and sends an alert by email or text the moment it stops responding.
Monitoring costs little next to a lost day of calls. A 5 minute check interval catches anything long enough to cost you customers. Keep a record of each incident, its cause and how long it lasted. A pattern of short outages at the same hour usually points to a server or backup job, not bad luck.
A small business does not need a public status page, but it does need someone watching who can act on the alert. An alert at 3 a.m. that nobody reads is the same as no alert. Beth’s reasoning has not changed since 1998: 3 a.m. in Houston is 10 a.m. in Europe and the start of the business day on the East Coast, so a website is never down at a convenient time.
On our servers, our own team watches availability so the response starts before the phone rings. Sites on our managed cloud hosting get that monitoring plus the resources to absorb a traffic spike without being throttled.
Up but not working
My website is up but not working. What is wrong?
A site can pass every availability test and still fail the business. The page loads, but the contact form sends email nowhere. The checkout throws an error at the payment step. The phone number dials the wrong line. Google has stopped indexing the pages after a setting changed.
These problems do the most damage because nothing looks broken. The impact shows up as fewer calls and fewer sales, not an error page. The only way to catch them is to test the actions a customer takes: fill in the form, place a test order, tap the phone number. Form email fails quietly when mail settings or email DNS records change, so send yourself a test submission every month.
Also check the Pages report in Google Search Console. Pages you never created showing up, or pages you did create vanishing, can mean a hack or a server misconfiguration even though the home page loads fine.
That is the job of our free website analysis. We check the site from the outside the way a customer and Google see it, then tell you in plain English what is wrong and whether hosting is the cause.
What a host owes you
What should my web host do when my website goes down?
Beth started our hosting arm because, in her words, most hosting companies are good until they are bad and you need them. Then you find out whether you have someone on your side or someone who sends a bill. Here is what a host owes you.
- Answer the phone. A ticket queue is fine for a password reset, not for an outage. You should reach a person who can see your server.
- Tell you the cause. “It is back up now” is not an answer. You need to know whether it was the server, a plugin, DNS or an attack.
- Keep the server current. The host is responsible for keeping its side of the server upgraded and secured. Outdated server software is how a clean WordPress site still gets broken into.
- Include backups, security and SSL. These are not add-ons.
- Let you leave. Any company that makes it nearly impossible to move your site is one you should not sign up with. A real WordPress site can be packed up and moved; a proprietary platform cannot.
The honest case for hosting with Vertical Web is simple. We teach this material in public classes, so you can check all of it yourself. One in-house team has handled design, hosting and SEO since 1998, so there is no finger pointing between vendors when something breaks. Our original 1998 client is still with us. And we will tell you what not to buy, including the paid SSL certificate and the emergency redesign you do not need. Our guide on how to choose a web host lists the questions to ask before you sign.
Questions
Website down or not working: common questions
Open the site on a phone using cellular data instead of Wi-Fi, then run the address through a website availability checker that tests from several locations. If both fail, it is down for everyone. If only your office fails, the problem is your network or a DNS cache.
That error almost always means DNS. Either the domain expired, the DNS records that point the domain to the server were changed or deleted, or a recent host or email move left a record out. Check the registrar first, then the DNS zone.
Yes, and it is the most common cause we see. A plugin, theme or WordPress core update can conflict with something else on the site and produce a white screen or a 500 error. Back up before every update so you can roll it back in minutes.
Most hosts keep a backup for a server failure, not for mistakes made inside the site, and many keep it on the same server. Ask how often they back up, how long they keep it, where it is stored and how fast they can restore it.
It depends on the cause. A rolled back update or a restored backup can take about an hour. An expired domain can take a day or more to resolve after renewal. A hacked site with an infected database can take much longer, which is why a clean backup matters.
Often, yes. Form email fails quietly when server mail settings change or a domain’s email records move to a new provider. Send yourself a test submission each month, and if it stops arriving, check the email DNS records and server mail settings before you blame the form.
Keep reading
More on hosting, domains and keeping a site up
Site down, slow or acting up?
Request the free website analysis and we will tell you what is actually wrong, in plain English, before anyone touches your site.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253 | info@verticalweb.com