Website Problems: A Troubleshooting Guide

Most website problems fall into a handful of categories, and most have a clear fix once you know what you are looking at. This guide gathers the emergencies and the everyday failures in one place, so when something is wrong you can go straight to the fix. Whatever is happening, work calmly and in order rather than deleting things at random, which usually makes it worse. Here are the problems, grouped by type, with the detailed fix for each.

Emergencies: act now

If your site is hacked, down, or broken, start here.

• My WordPress site was hacked: the first hour is the ordered response to a compromise.
• My website is down: a triage guide helps you find the cause fast.
• A plugin update broke my site. Now what? walks through recovering calmly.
• How to tell if your website has malware covers scanning and confirming an infection.

The site works but something is wrong

Not an emergency, but costing you.

• Why is my website so slow? 11 causes, ranked helps you find your specific bottleneck.
• My contact form stopped sending emails fixes the most common silent failure.
• "Not secure" warning: what it means, how to fix it clears the SSL warning that scares off visitors.
• My website disappeared from Google diagnoses why and how to recover.

Access and ownership problems

When the issue is control, not code.

• Who actually owns your website helps you confirm you control your own site.
• Getting access to your own site when the developer won't reply covers recovering control.

What to do next

Go straight to the article that matches your problem, most have a fix you can run yourself today. If the issue involves security, or a fix keeps failing, that is the point to get help before it gets worse. A site health audit is also a good way to find problems before they find you.