What to Do When Your Website Goes Down
It always seems to happen at the worst moment. A customer says your website isn't working, you try it, and you get an error, a blank page, or a browser warning you've never seen before.
Take a breath. Most outages are short, and most have a handful of very ordinary causes. Here's what to do, in order.
First ten minutes
- Check it isn't just you. Try the site on your phone with Wi-Fi switched off. If it loads on mobile data, the problem may be your office network or broadband, not the website.
- Read the error properly. "Not secure", "500 Internal Server Error", "This site can't be reached" and "Error establishing a database connection" all mean different things. Take a screenshot.
- Look at our status page. If there's a wider problem, it'll be on the status page, and you'll know we're already working on it.
- Think about what changed. A plugin update last night? A new theme? Someone editing DNS? The cause is very often the last thing that was touched.
The usual suspects
The domain has expired
More common than you'd think. If your domain renewal failed, perhaps because a card expired, the website and your email can both stop at once. Log in to wherever you bought the domain and check the expiry date.
The SSL certificate has run out
If visitors see a big "Your connection is not private" warning, it's usually an expired or missing certificate. On SwiftNest these renew automatically. If you've just moved a domain to us, though, it can take a short while after the DNS change for the new certificate to be issued.
A plugin or theme update went wrong
The classic WordPress "critical error" or a 500 error straight after an update. You can often fix this yourself: open the file manager in your control panel, find the plugin's folder in wp-content/plugins, and rename it. WordPress will switch it off and the site usually comes back. Then you can deal with the plugin in peace.
DNS changes
If someone has recently edited DNS records or moved the domain, parts of the internet may be seeing the old setup and parts the new. This settles down on its own, usually within a few hours.
The site has been hacked
Strange redirects, pages in a language you don't speak, or a warning from Google. Don't try to tidy it up yourself first. Tell us straight away, because the sooner we look, the more clean backups there are to choose from.
The website address, roughly when it stopped working, what you see (a screenshot is perfect), and anything that changed recently. With that, we can usually go straight to the problem instead of spending the first few emails asking questions.
Afterwards
Once it's back up, spend ten minutes making the next time less likely:
- Switch on auto-renew for your domain and check the card on file.
- Take a backup before every update, not after.
- Set up a free uptime monitor, so you hear about problems before your customers tell you.
And if it's us that's broken, we'll say so, fix it, and tell you what happened. Our uptime commitment and the service credits behind it are in our published terms.
Need a hand with any of this?
We're an Essex hosting company run by people who answer their own emails. If something here raised a question, just ask.
Talk to SwiftNest