My Website is down, What can I do?

Make sure your domain name is not expired and your hosting is not suspended. It could just be your browser or internet connection. Restart your modem/router to resolve this issue or you could just phone a friend and have them test your site. To be doubly sure you can also check if the website is down for everyone or just for you. You can do this by visiting a website like https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/ and entering the URL of the website.

Determine the cause to pinpoint why the downtime is occurring. It could be a programming error, DNS problem, expired domain, hardware related, etc. Contact your hosting company or check with your developer if it is not server-related.

Please note that it’s a good practice to always check the status page as this could save you a lot of time. You can visit our status page using https://status.mysecurecloudhost.com/.

Common Reasons for Website Downtime

1. Coding Error

A misplaced comma can cause issues. Websites function with thousands of lines of code, meaning a misplaced comma can cause issues.

To weed out errors, test every piece of code thoroughly before it goes live to fix potential issues. Keep detailed records of changes and previous outages to identify errors. Ensure your processes and policies are regularly updated and hire professionals where possible to prevent this from happening.

2. Outdated Hardware Problems

One reason for the downtime of your website is outdated hardware. Servers are a key part of your website infrastructure and any disruption can lead to downtime.

To prevent hardware failures from causing you downtime, upgrade your server regularly when it’s struggling to keep up.

3. Poor Hosting Provider

Not all hosting providers are reliable and offer a website uptime guarantee. With a greater chance of hardware failure, downtime chances increase.

Look for reliable hosting providers with positive reviews. Choose the best complimentary plan for you.

4. DNS Issues

Issues with the DNS can prevent a website from loading. DNS) maps a domain name with an IP address, and it’s critical for website uptime.

Check whatsmydns.com or get in touch with your hosting provider for the correct DNS records.

5. DDOS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service, attacks happens when hackers flood a website with huge traffic to make it unavailable. This eats up the server bandwidth and resources, leading to overload.

This can be prevented by running load tests regularly and investing in firewalls.

6. CMS Issues

CMS(Content Management Systems) use plugins, extensions, themes, third-party integrations, and other tools to provide extra features and functionalities. Unfortunately, newer versions of these integrations can cause compatibility issues.

To fix this issue avoid nulled or old themes and plugins.

7. 404 Not Found

A 404 error occurs when your web server cannot find a page that has been requested.
In the case where a page no longer exists, it means the page has been removed.

You can be sure to check if it has nothing to do with your hosting account being suspended, contact support to confirm this. Check this page for a detailed description of how to resolve.

8. 502 Bad Gateway

Gateway errors do not normally mean the website is down, but some part of the internet is either not working or too busy to deal with your request.

Use a Traceroute command and the domain of your website to further trace the location of the issue or contact your hosting company if the issue persists.

9. 503 Service Unavailable

This error tells us that the web server is too busy to deal with your request. If you are on a shared hosting package then it could be that one or more websites that share your server are super-busy and there is no bandwidth left for your website.

If this error does not resolve itself, contact your hosting provider.

10. Security Warnings

This is normally caused either by the absence of an SSL certificate on the web server or when an SSL certificate has expired. If there is no valid SSL certificate and the website is trying to deliver content via https, the browser will stop the website from sending data and show a warning.

Add a valid SSL certificate to your website to resolve this issue. There is a free SSL that comes pre-installed in your cPanel.

12. 500 Internal Server Error

The most difficult to diagnose, the most common reasons for this error could be over usage of account resources(RAM, CPU), incorrect .htaccess code or file and folder permission, or a mod_security rule You might have some server issues.

Check the server status and logs for any errors or issues. Update to a later version of the PHP programming language. Contact your hosting provider. To check detailed solutions to each issue, refer to this article.

Back up your website before taking any of the above-mentioned tips. This can be done automatically through a backup tool in cPanel. If your site break, you can restore the copy of your backup to get the website running again,

Understanding the common reasons for these errors means preventative steps can be taken to avoid them happening again. Ensure you regularly back-up data.

Downtime affects the best of us. Staying calm will go a long way in making sure that you and your team can resolve the problem as quickly as possible.