If your website suddenly cannot be accessed, don’t panic yet. Find out first the cause of the website down and immediately make improvements. Especially, if the website is used for business purposes. Business credibility becomes doubtful and your sales performance may decrease.
However, how do you deal with website downtime? Calm. In this article, we will discuss the causes of website server downtime and how to deal with them appropriately. Let’s see the explanation!
Here are 7 Causes of Website Server Down and How to Overcome Them!
There are several reasons why the website cannot be accessed. This is the reason the website is down:
1. Poor Quality Hosting
One of the causes of website downtime is that your hosting service does not provide optimal performance.
As is known, a server is a device that must be able to work non-stop so that the website continues to be online 24 hours. However, sometimes problems arise which cause the website server to go down. This could be because of the quality of the servers, the technology used, and the less than optimal maintenance.
Ideally, a hosting service provider is able to provide an uptime guarantee of up to 99.99%.
What does this high uptime mean? The web server that is used will always be online and if it goes down it only lasts for 5 minutes in one year.
2. Flooded Traffic
Apart from poor hosting, the website can go down if the traffic is booming. For example, when you are holding a sales promo at a certain time. This condition will certainly trigger many visitors to access the website at the same time.
What will happen with the conditions above? The number of simultaneous access will make the server unable to handle data requests properly. Usually it starts with slow access to completely inaccessible at all.
This gets worse if the hosting service used is not as needed. So, upgrade immediately if you find that your website needs increase.
3. Problematic DNS
Another cause of website down is the occurrence of problems with the DNS. As is known, DNS is a system that facilitates internet communication by using URLs. With this system, users no longer need to remember a series of numbers as an IP address when accessing a website.
DNS must be set correctly in order to be able to point to the right website. Sometimes, though, things go wrong. For example, you have typed the correct address but an error message appears in the browser. Apparently, the URL leads to another website that is not active.
If you experience this problem, you don’t need to panic. The fix, you can simply check the DNS settings in cPanel are correct. If you are still having problems, you can contact customer service for further assistance.
4. Constraints on WordPress
Constraints on WordPress can also be a cause of website downtime. The types of obstacles that occur are very many. So you need to determine what error is being raised.
For example, if your website cannot be accessed with a 404 error, it means that there is a problem with the URL used or the DNS settings. This problem will display a message that the website was not found. So, not always on the server side.
5. Hacker Attacks
Another cause of website down is due to hacker attacks. There are many hacker attacks that can disrupt websites such as malware, XSS, SQL Injection and DDoS.
An attack that is often used as a cause of website server downtime is DDoS. In its action, the hacker will flood the website with fake traffic so that the server is overwhelmed serving user requests.
DDoS attacks are usually aimed at websites with low security systems. Therefore, always increase the security of your website to prevent this. If necessary, you can use security services from third parties, such as CloudFlare.
6. Power Outage
Power outages or power outages are also the cause of website downtime. Because, when the data center is disrupted and the server dies, of course your website will also experience an impact.
Power outages are usually related to routine maintenance that must be carried out. If the data center has adequate power reserves, server down problems can be avoided.
However, outage problems can occur unexpectedly. For example, due to a lightning strike that not only kills the server but damages the server infrastructure, as happened to the Microsoft Azure service.
This is of course unavoidable. However, you can contact customer service to find out the problem information. That way, you can notify visitors of these problems when the website returns to normal. This is to maintain their trust in your website.
7. Server Maintenance
Server maintenance is a routine activity of hosting service providers in an effort to maintain servers. Maintenance can range from feature updates to equipment (hardware) or other routine checks.
The maintenance process certainly makes website access problematic. In fact, sometimes it can’t be accessed at all for a certain time. Fortunately, most of the maintenance is done outside of peak hours. So, it doesn’t really affect business activities.
As a website owner, you just have to wait for the ongoing maintenance process. In fact, if the hosting provider has informed the maintenance schedule, you can just postpone sales promotion activities or website updates at the specified time.
8. Coding error
Errors in coding or website code structure can be one of the causes of website downtime. There may be typos or incomplete symbols. Even though the cause is quite trivial, this coding error can mess up your website as a whole.
To solve this problem, you need to know which code is the error. In WordPress you will usually get a Syntax Error notification. You will also get file information along with the error code line.
So, immediately fix the error file by overcoming the syntax error.
How to Check Server Down Easily
You have learned the causes of website downtime and one of the main causes is server issues. Then, how do you ensure the condition of the server before making the necessary repairs?
You can check the server through various online tools. Some of them are Downforeveryoneorjustme.com, Site24x7.com and Isitdownrightnow.com.
How to check with the tool above is quite easy. For example, if you use isitdownrightnow.com, you can simply enter the website URL in the column provided. Then, click Check.
Not to forget, this tool also provides ways to overcome website downtime. So, if the website status is normal but you can’t access the website, there are several solutions provided. For example, clearing browser cache, fixing problematic DNS, and more.
Find the Causes of Website Down and Immediately Overcome it Appropriately!
So, those are some of the causes of website downtime. That’s quite a lot, huh? Starting from bad web hosting, hacker attacks, to power outages.
You have also learned how to deal with website down. Starting from ensuring server status with various tools, checking DNS settings, increasing website security to ensuring there are no problems with WordPress.
Apart from that, choosing the best hosting provider is very important. For this reason, consider this step carefully so that your website can be accessed online at any time and is easy to overcome if you experience problems.
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