My Website Is Down: A Triage Guide

If your website is down, work through it in order rather than panicking. First confirm it is genuinely down and not just your connection. Then narrow the cause: a hosting outage, an expired domain, an SSL problem, or a change someone made. Each has a different fix and a different person to call, so identifying which one you are dealing with is most of the job. Here is the triage, step by step.

Step 1: Is it actually down?

Before anything, confirm the problem is the site and not you. Load it on your phone using mobile data, not your office wifi, or ask someone elsewhere to try. Sometimes "the site is down" is a local network or cache problem and the site is fine for everyone else.

If it loads for others but not you, clear your browser cache or try a private window. If it is down for everyone, keep going.

Step 2: What kind of "down" is it?

The error tells you a lot about where to look.

• A hosting error (a server error, a blank page, a host holding-page): the problem is on the server side. Go to step 3.
• "This site can't be reached" or a domain-for-sale page: likely a domain or DNS problem. Go to step 4.
• A "not secure" or certificate warning: an SSL problem, not a true outage. Here is the SSL fix.
• The site was fine minutes ago and you just changed something: a bad update. Go to step 5.

Step 3: Check your hosting

If it looks like a server problem, check your host's status page for a known outage. If they are down, it is their job to fix, and your job is to know when it will be back. Contact their support.

If there is no reported outage, the issue may be your site overwhelming cheap hosting during a traffic spike, or a resource limit. Support can tell you which.

Step 4: Check the domain

A domain that has expired takes the whole site and email down, and it is more common than people expect because renewal emails get missed. Confirm your domain is registered and paid up. If you are not sure you even control it, who owns your website covers how to check. If it lapsed, renew it immediately, though it can take a little time to come back.

Step 5: Did someone just change something?

If the site died right after an update, a new plugin, or an edit, that change is your prime suspect. Undo it: restore a backup or roll back the update. A plugin update breaking the site has the full recovery path. If it followed a hack rather than a change, the hack response applies.

Who do you call?

Match the cause to the right person, so you are not waiting on the wrong one:

What to do next

Confirm it is really down, read the error, and match it to the four causes above. Most outages are one of these and have a clear owner. If you cannot tell what kind of down it is, or the site keeps going down, that pattern is worth a proper look. Having someone already responsible for the site, through a maintenance arrangement, turns an outage from a scramble into a phone call.