What to do when your website goes down

You type your own web address and get an error page, a browser warning or nothing at all. Customers can’t see your prices or book, and you don’t know whether the problem is your laptop, your site or something bigger.

Most outages have a short list of causes, and most of them can be fixed the same day by the right person. The hard part is working out which one you’ve got without losing an hour to guesswork.

First, check it isn’t just you

Before you ring anyone, rule out your own connection. It takes two minutes.

• Open the site on your phone with Wi-Fi switched off, so it loads over mobile data instead of your office broadband.
• Try a different device, or ask someone at home or a friend across town to open it.
• Put the address into an “is it down” checker such as downforeveryoneorjustme.com, which tries the site from its own servers.
• Write down exactly what you see. “This site can’t be reached”, a padlock warning and a page full of code all point to different problems.

If the site loads everywhere except your own machine, the fault is local, usually your router or your browser. If it fails everywhere, the site has a problem and it’s time to find out which one.

The usual causes, in plain words

An expired domain. The name stopped being renewed, often because the card on file expired or the reminder went to an old email address. For a .uk name, Nominet suspends it once 30 days have passed since expiry, and after 90 days it can be cancelled and released for anyone to register. Email on the same domain usually stops at the same time.

An expired SSL certificate. This is the file behind the padlock. When it lapses, browsers show a full-page warning saying the connection isn’t private, and most visitors leave.

A hosting outage. The company that runs the server is having problems. Their status page or social accounts will usually say so.

A broken update. A plugin, theme or software update went wrong, often on a WordPress site, and the site now shows an error or a blank white page.

A hack. The site redirects to spam, shows content you didn’t write, or your host has taken it offline to stop it spreading. Our guide to website security basics covers how this usually happens.

A DNS change. Someone edited the settings that point your domain at your host, perhaps while setting up a new email service, and the website record got changed or deleted along the way.

Who to call, and what to tell them

If someone built or looks after your site, call them first. If you manage it yourself, the domain registrar handles domain and DNS problems and the hosting company handles everything on the server.

Have this ready before you dial:

• the web address and the time you first noticed it was down
• what you see on screen, with a screenshot
• anything that changed recently: an update, a new email setup, a payment that failed, a new person given access
• your account logins, or at least the email address the accounts are registered to

That last point catches a lot of people. If you don’t know who the domain is registered with or which email it’s under, recovery slows down badly. Our article on setting up a domain properly explains how to find out and fix it.

Keep customers in the loop

While the site is down, the people trying to reach you still need an answer. Put it where they’re already looking.

Google Business Profile. Add an update post saying the website is down and giving your phone number and email. Posts appear on your profile in Search and Maps, so people who search your name see it.

Social accounts. A short post with the same details, pinned to the top if the platform allows it.

Voicemail and email. Change your voicemail message to say you’re taking bookings by phone for now. If your email still works, an auto-reply that does the same helps anyone who wrote in through the old form.

Keep the wording plain and skip the drama. “Our website is down today, call us on this number to book” is enough.

Stop it happening again

Most outages are preventable with a few settings and someone paying attention.

• Domain on auto-renew, in your own name, with a card that won’t expire soon and a contact email you check every day.
• Uptime monitoring that alerts a person. A monitoring service checks the site every few minutes and sends an email or text when it stops responding. It’s only useful if the alert reaches someone who will act on it.
• Backups you’ve tested. A backup nobody has ever restored is a guess. Ask whoever runs your site when they last tested one.
• Updates done carefully, on a copy of the site first where that’s possible, not live on a Friday afternoon.
• One list of who has access to the domain, hosting and DNS, so changes don’t happen without anyone knowing.

A care plan covers most of this for you. Ours includes hosting, security, backups and the SSL certificate, and the people who built the site watch it and answer the phone when it breaks. What a website care plan covers goes through it in detail.

If your site is down now, or you’d like to know how exposed it is before it goes down, get in touch and we’ll take a look.