It’s frustrating to know that your website crashed and you cannot pinpoint the exact reason why. If your business’ income stream depends on your website’s uptime, minutes or hours of downtime may feel like forever.
So, what does your website outage status checker say about your current website downtime? Can you do something to prevent it from happening again?
If there is one thing that an outage checker can say about any website downtime, it is the fact that you are losing money, customers, and opportunities every time your site goes offline.
Moreover, while website crashing is not something new, and downtimes are inevitable, prolonged and frequent website outages are unnecessary and damaging.
Here are some common reasons why websites crash, as well as suggestions on how you can solve them.
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Expired Domains
If you fail to renew your web domain, chances are, your website will be taken down. Know that domain registration is different from web hosting. Even if your hosting plan is intact, your website domain can expire.
It is easy to remedy this problem. All you have to do is to login through your hosting plan account and renew the registration of your domain. To prevent this from recurring again, you can set up a Domain Expiry or WHOIS check to notify you two to three weeks before your domain expires. You will be alerted when the domain expiry is approaching so you can take care of it ahead of time.
To avoid missing the notification, you can integrate the domain expiry check with your push notification service. It’s easy to miss calendar updates and emails.
Malicious Attacks
Another reason why your website outage status checker says that your website is down is that hackers launched an attack, and your website becomes collateral damage. These hackers can gather user information, valuable data, and text exploits from sites that do not seem to be ideal targets.
As a consequence, they can take down your site and, worse, make you part of some blacklists that stop emails from being sent and received. These can eventually hurt your website’s traffic.
To remedy this problem, you have to make your website is secured. If you have a WordPress website, chances are, you can fall victim to spam comments. These spammy comments can crash your email accounts and your website, so if you do not need the comment section, better turn it off.
Keep all your plugins and software updated, too. And to prepare for the worst-case scenario, always backup your most stable installations. This will allow you to revert to a working version in case you run of troubleshooting options.
Scan your website for malware and viruses that can destroy your reputation. Use malware and virus scanners daily to prevent more significant problems.
Google Blacklisting
This may not be technically a crash, but being blacklisted by Google can create the same crippling effect as a website outage. If Google sees that your website is problematic, your site visitors will see a notification that warns of the issue and leaves them with a blocked homepage.
To remedy the issue, find out why Google blocked you and make the necessary corrections. If you are unsure, run a domain check test to find out.
Corrective Action: Read the error code on the page to find out why Google is blacklisting the site
Be Proactive in Checking Your Website
To avoid more significant losses due to prolonged and excessive downtime, be proactive in checking the status of your website. The faster you can find out that your website is down, the quicker you can remedy the problem.
Use a website status checker and see if your site is up and running. You can also check out different reports submitted by users about website outages, so you are always on top of your business operation.
