what causes a website to go down from server error

Equally 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 exist 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, nosotros've built upwardly a pretty hefty guide on how to diagnose and fix a website if information technology\'south non working.

This guide is built to assist those who aren't spider web developers or server managers. This one is for the minor business owner who is managing their own website, or for the marketing department in a visitor whose task it is to go yelled at when website issues arise. To those people: we've got your back.

Gratis HELP GETTING YOUR WEBSITE BACK UP

How to Tell Why a Website is Down - Diagnosing the Source of the Error

"This site tin't exist reached" Error

Check your net connection

If you're reading this article, the odds that your internet is downwards are pretty low, but sometimes only "part" of the net is down. This is possible for a couple reasons:

Your Internet access provider is having issues. We've actually had times where our net provider had server issues and part of their web traffic was being routed incorrectly.
A major DNS server is downwardly. In 2016, half of the cyberspace was downward due to a DDoS attack on DYN, a major DNS host. Imagine an old-timey major phone heart existence out of ability - phone calls weren't existence routed for a time.

So check to come across if you tin can get to other popular websites, and if you can, bank check with your internet provider to run into if they are having any outages. Typically, this is not the reason your website is downwards, just I've had a few "duh" moments when diagnosing problems.

Bank 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 past at present. This is a very mutual upshot, peculiarly with pocket-size businesses who outsource their web work. It's like shooting fish in a barrel 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 upwardly to xxx days (this is entirely upward to your domain registrar, then consider this before choosing 1). If you accept a grace period, it is during this time that y'all have priority over reclaiming your name - so re-register the domain immediately. If it's beyond that grace period, all the same, the odds of you getting it dorsum are slim to none. There'south an entire line of business centered around purchasing expired domains.

If you lot've lost it and the grace period is over, you\'re going to take to buy a new one and begin the lengthy process of updating that domain in all your marketing materials, spider web directories, and other places it may exist listed.

Your DNS may exist pointing to an IP accost or server that doesn't exist

I common effect causing the "website not found" fault is a problem with your DNS (domain proper name system). Think of DNS as your telephone contacts - each proper name points to a telephone number which points to a particular concrete phone. You've told a system that your web address should point to a particular server, identified past an IP accost, and if you've pointed it to the wrong i, that server won't recognize the incoming web proper name and it will return an fault.

Nosotros see this mutual effect with businesses who hired a freelance spider web designer who hosts the business concern 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 equally what you lot detect with this simple tool. If non, yous'll have to trace from there to make sure they're all pointing to where they should be.

500 Internal Server Error - Y'all\'ve got some server issues

1 of the nearly common error letters that pop up with websites is a "500 - Internal Server Fault" 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 existence blocked. A few things to check include:

Did something modify with your hosting provider?

The first place to check is with your hosting provider. Get in touch with them and enquire if any changes were made to your server including permissions, your environs settings, domain settings, or whatsoever other settings. They should be able to help you figure information technology out and, if the problem was on their end, fix it for you.

.htaccess

We're getting a trivial 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 exist completely bare. Then try to load your site - if it'due south fixed, you'll have to fix that file to take the settings that best suit your needs. For example, if you accept a WordPress website, your .htaccess file should be setup similar the example here.

File and Folder Permissions

If y'all've been playing around with your website through FTP, yous'll notice that each folder has a ready of numbers associated with information technology in its "permissions" setting. These numbers dictate who tin can access diverse files and directories, and if your website is set up to block "read" and "execute" permissions from the public, you'll come across that dreaded 500 fault. Without getting too technical, all folders should typically be ready to "755" and all files should be at "644" at the very least. If you don't see this blueprint, you may want to talk to your spider web host or programmer and ask them to audit and fix it. Some web hosts have a neat fiddling feature called "reset all permissions" that you can use to quickly repair this issue, too.

PHP issues

This may be a little more for avant-garde server managers, but various PHP permissions and settings can crusade files and directories to be blocked. Y'all'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 mistake pops up in spider web browsers if yous're trying to access your website through SSL (secure socket layers) when SSL is not properly set upward. In more relatable terms, you're trying to utilise a fundamental to unlock a door that doesn't have a keyhole. In your browser bar, enter your web accost 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 merely that you lot don't have an SSL certificate or it's set up incorrectly.

If you get the same error again, your SSL may accept expired, or it may take been prepare incorrectly. How this is washed depends on your hosting surround and your website settings, and so it can become a little complicated to navigate through. Contact your web host to have this prepare for you, or your web developer to right the website'due south settings.

A "site is hosted here but not set upwardly" or "site parked" fault

If you load your website and you get a "this site is hosted by" or "see how to purchase this domain" spider web page, information technology 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 identify
You've bought hosting with a provider but it expired
A fault was made in your DNS

Cheque your domain registrar settings, and make certain that the name servers or DNS records are gear up according to the instructions of your web host.

A blank page shows up, or very bones elements of a website

If you load your website, and all that you come across is a bare white folio, or something with very minimal text or design elements, the likely effect 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 exist updated, or was updated and at that place 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 uniform or updated

If you suspect one of these things might be the event, y'all'll take to login to your website and update all your plugins and your CMS cadre. If logging inis not an choice at this point, contact your web host or spider web programmer and see if you lot 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 irksome 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 yous tin load it but it's so slow it may only load sometimes (or not at all), you lot're most likely looking at a hosting upshot. Nosotros see this a lot with inexpensive $5-per-month hosts - they put your site on a server with hundreds of others and information technology gets overloaded.

But there are other reasons for a slow site, as well:

Scripts that are timing out due to existence erstwhile our misrouted
Yous might accept 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 irksome, make sure you update all your plugins and CMS core, cheque your host's organisation status for errors, and reach out to your web host to get to the lesser 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.

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Source: https://www.postmm.com/website-management/what-to-do-if-your-website-is-down/