You’ve done everything recommended to create a flawless website, but a problem arises: your site is down or offline. We know your goal is to strengthen your project’s online presence; but with your website offline, you can compromise your business image and undermine your marketing strategy. This is even worse when it comes to online stores, where every second of downtime means one less sale.
To make it easier to understand, let’s start with the website building phase. Creating a website is a lot like building a house!
You’ll need to choose an address and a plot of land before starting construction. The land that houses the house is equivalent to a website’s web hosting service . This is where we store all the content for your website, blog, or online store. Server unavailability can be one of the reasons why your website goes offline; however, there are many other factors; we’ll list them below.
Reasons that can take a website offline
Various factors can interfere with your website’s availability, from an expired domain name, hacker attacks, and even international route blockages. We’ve compiled a list of the main factors and the actions you can take to avoid them.
1. Website programming errors
If you built your website yourself, using a tool like a site builder or another content management system like WordPress, you likely america phone number list haven’t made any code changes. But if you hired a web developer, they likely used a programming language, such as PHP or JavaScript, to create your website. In that case, a few changes to the source code or a simple error in the code can take your site offline. For this reason, it’s important to talk to your web developer about any issues that could cause your website to become unavailable.
2. Errors in URL redirection
Have you ever heard of a 301 redirect ? It’s a redirect that appears in a specific direction, redirecting the user to the correct location. It’s often necessary to modify old links; for this reason, it’s very important that the redirect be carried out carefully; otherwise, your website could go offline . Since this isn’t the only type of redirect, check with your developer to see if this could be the cause of your website’s downtime.
3. Website configuration failures on the hosting
After choosing your web hosting provider, you’ll need to configure it. If you’re not well-versed in website programming, it’s important to enlist the help of the team at the company you’re hiring. Even when choosing a web hosting provider for your website, check to see if they offer specialized support in Spanish.
A small error in your website’s hosting configuration can take it offline; so when setting up your site, pay close attention to factors such as compatibility and proper CMS installation. Review content transfer, verify themes, and what are the consequences of not carrying out effective plugins. Any errors can take your website offline. Talk to the company’s support team about the versions supported by the service and the scope of support; that is, what type of configuration is the company’s responsibility and what is yours.
4. Use of web hosting plan resources
When you purchase a web hosting service, you choose a plan, which generally includes a specific capacity for processing resources, memory, disk usage, internet connection, among others. If the limit established in the plan is reached, the plan may be taken offline. There are various causes for excessive resource usage, such as: very popular websites with a large number of simultaneous accesses, plugins in content egypt data management systems, poorly developed scripts, excessive FTP and database usage, and others. But all of this can be easily resolved by speaking with a consultant from the web hosting company.
5. Hosting server unavailability
Do you know what uptime is ? This is the term used to identify a server’s uptime. The higher the uptime, the lower the probability of having a website offline. The best hosting services typically guarantee a 99.9% uptime. That is, the chance of a website going offline is just 0.1% in a given period. If you hired a provider that offers this guarantee, it means that, in the worst-case scenario, your website could be offline for a maximum of eight hours in a one-year period, which has 8,760 hours in total .
Want to learn more about how to avoid hosting issues that could take your website offline? Learn how to choose the best hosting option for your website .