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Everyone small business owner knows that sharp, sinking feeling when a website fails to load. Twenty minutes can feel like a lifetime when you’re sitting there wondering, “How will customers find my hours, services, and specials if the website won’t load?”
Don’t panic! TrustWorkz is here to help with our simple guide to fixing website hosting problems.
So What’s the Problem?
In today’s digital age, customers are well-versed in the hiccups that cause website errors. If there’s a brief period when a visitor can’t access your website, you haven’t lost that customer for good. Chances are, they’ll find the information they need on your Facebook or Google My Business page, which gives you time to resolve your website woes without falling into that oh-so-tempting panic spiral.
You don’t need a tech degree to figure out why your website went down. We’ve compiled a list of the most common reasons:
- Website and server updates. Updates are needed to keep your website running at peak performance, but they may disrupt your website for a brief period of time. Server maintenance is typically scheduled during low-traffic times, and sites return to normal function within 10 minutes to an hour.
- Getting locked out. Multiple failed login attempts will temporarily block you from accessing the website.
- Storms and weather damage. If weather causes power loss to server centers, even big-name companies like Facebook and Netflix have to wait out the problem. Rest assured that technicians are working double time to return the servers to full functionality.
- Domain renewals. Are you up-to-date on your payments? If you let your domain lapse, your website has nowhere to live. Luckily GoDaddy has a grace period that usually allows us to get your website back up within a few hours of renewing the domain.
- Delinquent attacks and hacking attempts. Hacking is every website owner’s worst fear, but with the frequently-updated security measures we put in place on our customers’ sites, it’s also the least likely reason for a website error. If a hacking attempt triggers the security warnings on your website, we’ll block all traffic to protect your data and site visitors until we can resolve the problem.
What to Do When Your Website Goes Down
There are two simple steps to fixing any website hosting issues:
- Check that the site is actually down. It’s easy to jump to conclusions when your website won’t load, but just because you can’t access it doesn’t mean no one can. Go to http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/ and enter your website’s url. It will tell you whether the server is down or if it’s an isolated incident that can be fixed by resetting your wifi or clearing the cookies on your browser.
- Contact TrustWorkz Support. Your account manager may be the person you trust most at TrustWorkz, but they’re not trained to fix website hosting issues. The fastest way to get your website back up and running is to contact TrustWorkz Support. We’ll determine the source of the problem, keep you in the loop, and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Have more questions about maintaining your online presence? Let us know and we’ll address your top questions on the TrustWorkz blog!