As a website hosting company, we've managed a ton of websites over the years that have had a great track record of not breaking - we try to be proactive to prevent everything that could go wrong. But, that doesn't mean that we haven't had to react to our fair share of issues and errors. Between managing our own clients' websites, and helping other businesses on other hosts, we've built up a pretty hefty guide on how to diagnose and fix a website if it\'s not working.
This guide is built to assist those who aren't web developers or server managers. This one is for the small business owner who is managing their own website, or for the marketing department in a company whose job it is to get yelled at when website issues arise. To those people: we've got your back.
HELP GETTING YOUR WEBSITE BACK UP
How to Tell Why a Website is Down - Diagnosing the Source of the Error
"This site can't be reached" Error
Check your internet connection
If you're reading this article, the odds that your internet is down are pretty low, but sometimes only "part" of the internet is down. This is possible for a couple reasons:
- Your ISP is having issues. We've actually had times where our internet provider had server issues and part of their web traffic was being routed incorrectly.
- A major DNS server is down. In 2016, half of the internet was down due to a DDoS attack on DYN, a major DNS host. Imagine an old-timey major phone center being out of power - phone calls weren't being routed for a time.
So check to see if you can get to other popular websites, and if you can, check with your internet provider to see if they are having any outages. Typically, this is not the reason your website is down, but I've had a few "duh" moments when diagnosing problems.
Check your registrar to see if your domain has expired
If I had a nickel for every time I've gotten a panicked "my website is down" phone call, only to find out that the caller let their domain expire, I'd have approximately 85 cents by now. This is a very common issue, especially with small businesses who outsource their web work. It's easy to miss or ignore those "your domain is expiring" emails from your host, so log in to your domain registrar account and see if your web domain is still active.
If it's expired, you typically have a grace period of up to 30 days (this is entirely up to your domain registrar, so consider this before choosing one). If you have a grace period, it is during this time that you have priority over reclaiming your name - so re-register the domain immediately. If it's beyond that grace period, however, the odds of you getting it back are slim to none. There's an entire line of business centered around purchasing expired domains.
If you've lost it and the grace period is over, you\'re going to have to buy a new one and begin the lengthy process of updating that domain in all your marketing materials, web directories, and other places it may be listed.
Your DNS may be pointing to an IP address or server that doesn't exist
One common issue causing the "website not found" error is a problem with your DNS (domain name system). Think of DNS as your phone contacts - each name points to a phone number which points to a particular physical phone. You've told a system that your web address should point to a particular server, identified by an IP address, and if you've pointed it to the wrong one, that server won't recognize the incoming web name and it will return an error.
We see this common issue with businesses who hired a freelance web designer who hosts the business website in their own systems, and doesn't maintain or even renew their own hosting server. So, log into your domain registrar account and find out what your "name servers" and/or host records are and verify that they look the same as what you find with this simple tool. If not, you'll have to trace from there to make sure they're all pointing to where they should be.
500 Internal Server Error - You\'ve got some server issues
One of the most common error messages that pop up with websites is a "500 - Internal Server Error" message. This means that your website might be pointing to the right place, but from there, things aren\'t pointing to the right place or are being blocked. A few things to check include:
Did something change with your hosting provider?
The first place to check is with your hosting provider. Get in touch with them and ask if any changes were made to your server including permissions, your environment settings, domain settings, or any other settings. They should be able to help you figure it out and, if the problem was on their end, fix it for you.
.htaccess
We're getting a little technical here, but there's a file on each server that manages who and what can access which files and folders. This is called the .htaccess file, and it can cause major issues if edited incorrectly. Find yours by browsing your files through FTP or through your web portal provided by your host, and edit it to be completely blank. Then try to load your site - if it's fixed, you'll have to set up that file to have the settings that best suit your needs. For example, if you have a WordPress website, your .htaccess file should be setup like the example here.
File and Folder Permissions
If you’ve been playing around with your website through FTP, you’ll notice that each folder has a set of numbers associated with it in its “permissions” setting. These numbers dictate who can access various files and directories, and if your website is set to block “read” and “execute” permissions from the public, you’ll run into that dreaded 500 error. Without getting too technical, all folders should typically be set to “755” and all files should be at “644” at the very least. If you don’t see this pattern, you may want to talk to your web host or developer and ask them to audit and fix it. Some web hosts have a neat little feature called “reset all permissions” that you can use to quickly repair this issue, too.
PHP issues
This may be a little more for advanced server managers, but various PHP permissions and settings can cause files and directories to be blocked. You'll have to dig into the help files for your server host and make sure you've got all your settings correct.
“Your connection is not private”or "connection is not secure" error
This error pops up in web browsers if you’re trying to access your website through SSL (secure socket layers) when SSL is not properly set up. In more relatable terms, you’re trying to use a key to unlock a door that doesn’t have a keyhole. In your browser bar, enter your web address with “http://” in front of it - like http://www.mywebsitehere.com - and see if your site works. If it does, then your site is fine, it’s just that you don’t have an SSL certificate or it’s set up incorrectly.
If you get the same error again, your SSL may have expired, or it may have been set up incorrectly. How this is done depends on your hosting environment and your website settings, so it can get a little complicated to navigate through. Contact your web host to have this set up for you, or your web developer to correct the website’s settings.
A “site is hosted here but not set up” or “site parked” error
If you load your website and you get a “this site is hosted by” or “see how to purchase this domain” web page, it means that your website isn’t pointing to your server properly. This happens for a number of reasons:
- Your domain might be pointing to the wrong place
- You might have updated your products with your hosting provider to the wrong place
- You've bought hosting with a provider but it expired
- A mistake was made in your DNS
Check your domain registrar settings, and make sure that the name servers or DNS records are set up according to the instructions of your web host.
A blank page shows up, or very basic elements of a website
If you load your website, and all that you see is a blank white page, or something with very minimal text or design elements, the likely issue is that there's something wrong with your CMS (content management system). A few likely culprits for sites using WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or another CMS:
- Your plugins or CMS core needs to be updated, or was updated and there are compatibility issues
- Your site uses a page builder like Visual Composer, and the plugin is deactivated, out of date, or unlicensed
- Recently, a lot of web hosts have forced their clients to update to PHP version 7.2, and their websites or its plugins weren't compatible or updated
If you suspect one of these things might be the issue, you’ll have to login to your website and update all your plugins and your CMS core. If logging inis not an option at this point, contact your web host or web developer and see if you can restore an older backup from when your website was working- then update from there.
The website seems to be there, but loads really slowly, or all elements (like photos) don’t load fully
A really slow website is a problem for a number of reasons - user experience, SEO, ability to update and more. If your website times out a lot, meaning you can load it but it’s so slow it may only load sometimes (or not at all), you’re most likely looking at a hosting issue. We see this a lot with inexpensive $5-per-month hosts - they put your site on a server with hundreds of others and it gets overloaded.
But there are other reasons for a slow site, too:
- Scripts that are timing out due to being old our misrouted
- You might have a redirect loop - pages redirecting to each other
- Your CDN may be misconfigured
- Your site may have been hacked, (possibly by things like a DDOS or bitcoin mining)
If your site is running slow, make sure you update all your plugins and CMS core, check your host’s system status for errors, and reach out to your web host to get to the bottom of it. It’s possible, you won’t be able to see which scripts or files are the culprit without their help since you don’t have access to the server logs or processes.
