Top 5 troubleshooting steps when your website is down

This article will help you resolve website outages of all types, walking you through the entire website hosting stack/process from domain registration to web server issues.

1. Check to be sure it’s not just you

A common tool to determine if it’s just you experiencing the outage is downforeveryoneorjustme.com. Enter your website URL there to see if it’s just you experiencing the outage. If it is just you, try these steps to help resolve the issue:

1. Try another device or browser. For example if you’re using Chrome browser on your Mac, try using the browser on your phone. If this works, you should clear your browser cache and cookies and try again.
2. Try another Internet connection / IP. On a mobile device, disconnect from WiFi and try accessing the site over the cellular Internet connection (assuming you have data). On your computer, if you have access to a VPN service, try connecting (or disconnecting) from the VPN; this will change your IP address. If this works, then your IP is likely blocked by the server. To resolve this, learn how to unblock your IP. That article also describes how to prevent blocks in the future.

2. Check for known server/network outages

When there is a widespread problem with one of our servers, we create a “Network Issue” in the Client Centre: check out the public network status page. Read through any open network issues and determine if the description of that problem sounds like it matches your issue. If it does, then we’re already working on it! The network issues page will be updated when we have new information on the problem, so keep checking back there.

3. Check if your hosting plan has been suspended

Log in to the Client Centre to see if your website hosting plan is suspended. If so, you’ll typically see either:

1. An unpaid invoice under the Invoices tab
2. A support ticket indicating an issue and why it has been suspended

4. Check the domain registration WHOIS info

The domain must be registered and active, otherwise all attempts to load the website will fail. Enter your domain to find the WHOIS data/info at who.is and look for:

• Domain Status: The verbiage is not always the same, but in general you’re looking for the status to be something positive like registered, active, ok. If it says something negative like expired, pending delete, or redemption, then your domain is expired.
• Expiry Date: Despite the verbiage of the Domain Status you can also check the expiry date to see if it is a past date to see if the domain is expired.
• Registrar: Will indicate who the registrar is (if registered with us, this might say eNom or Namesilo)
• Name Servers: Indicates the DNS hosting provider. More info below.

Expired Domain?

Log in to the Client Centre and go to Registered Domains. If your domain appears in the list, then there should be an unpaid invoice that corresponds with this registration. Complete payment on the invoice and the domain will soon be restored to full functionality.

If the domain is registered elsewhere look at the WHOIS info again – it will indicate who the registrar is. Do a web search for the registrar, login to their control panel, or contact their support, to have the domain renewed. After you have renewed the domain, you can transfer the domain to Websavers as having your web services in one spot often helps prevent accidental expiration.

Once renewed, the domain restore process is typically completed within just a few hours, but could be up to 24 hours. Unfortunately we can’t make it go any faster; that’s just the way the DNS system works.

Correct Name Servers?

In the WHOIS data, the piece of information that ensures the domain points to a Websavers server and hosting plan are the Name Servers.

There are typically two similar-looking name server values for each server that we operate. You will know if the name servers are Websavers servers if they end with websaversdns.com. Occasionally you might find one that ends with websavers.ca.

To determine if the Name Servers are correct, log in to the Client Centre, then click on the hosting plan where this website lives. Here you will see a section called “SERVER INFO” which will show the correct Name Servers to use for this hosting plan. Be sure these match the ones showing in the domain registration info. If the Name Servers do not match you will need to point the domain to your hosting with us.

5. Complete web hosting checks

Now that we’ve worked our way through more general issues, the following steps walk you through hosting level issues.

Is the domain suspended in Plesk Control Panel?

Log in to Plesk. If Plesk indicates that the account, subscription, or domain is suspended, then we’ve found the reason for the website not working! Try to unsuspend it in Plesk. If it says you don’t have access to do this, you will need to open a ticket to ask our support reps about why it’s suspended.

Analyze the server logs for errors

By this point the domain registration status and name server configuration should be all good, the hosting plan and domain within it should both be active, but the website is still down. Use our guide to analyzing Plesk logs to determine the cause of the issue. Potential solutions will be found there as well.