Help! My Website is Down!

Posted on March 17, 2008
Filed Under web hosting |

You sit down at your desk and open up your web browser to check out your pride and joy (which is set up as your default home page) and nothing happens. You hit the refresh button, and still get nothing. You start to wonder if others are trying to access your site and how much money you could be losing. As your blood pressure boils, you scramble for the phone number for your web hosting company’s support line to give them a piece of your mind for letting your site go down. You call and tell them that your site is down. They do some checking and assure you that “everything is fine on their end” – frustrated you hang up the phone. As you hang up, the phone drops and when you lean over to pick it up, you realize that your network cable is not plugged in – oops!

Let’s talk about a few things you can do if your website doesn’t come up before making that dreaded call to hosting support where you will be greeted with geek-speak after your whatever hold time you have.

Try to visit another website. If you can’t get to any other site, that is a good indication that the problem is not with your hosting company.

Make sure you are connected to the Internet by checking both the physical connection and checking the icon on your computers Internet connection.

If your Internet connection is live and you still can’t connect and you may want to try and reboot your cable modem and router. This is usually done by simply unplugging them both and then plugging in the cable modem, waiting for it to initialize as evidenced by the flashing lights, then plugging in the router.

If everything else checks out, you might want to give it a few minutes before calling your hosting company. Sometimes devices need to be rebooted which could take your site down for a quick

If you do have to call the hosting company, make sure you have all of your account information readily available, such as login name, domain name, and any password info. For your security, they may not talk to you unless you provide this information.

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