A customer calls to say your website is down, or you see an error message where your homepage should be. A WordPress website going offline is usually caused by a hosting outage, an expired domain or DNS error, a failed update, exhausted server capacity, or a hack. Check the following in this order: hosting status, domain and DNS, error message, and recent changes. This way, you can determine within a few minutes where the problem lies and who can fix it.
Is your website down, or is it your fault?
To determine whether your website is actually offline, try accessing it from outside your own network and using a different browser. If someone reports that a WordPress website is unavailable, that site is often still working just fine for the rest of the world. So first, check the URL for typos and make sure your router is working properly.
Next, open the site on your phone using 4G instead of Wi-Fi, and try using an incognito window. If you can see it there, the problem is in your browser cache, your computer’s DNS cache, or your own network. Also clear your cache plugin; otherwise, an old copy will remain. An external check like downforeveryoneorjustme.com will tell you in a few seconds whether the site is down for everyone or if it’s just you who thinks it’s down.
If the site works on 4G but not at the office, my first thought is login security. With Surver, an IP address is blocked after more than ten failed login attempts, even on wp-admin, a CAPTCHA page appears.
What do you see? Symptom, cause, and who can fix it
The notification in your browser tells you which layer the problem is in and who to call. Domain, hosting, and WordPress management are often handled by three different parties.
| What do you see? | Probable cause | Who will solve it? | Read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| “This site is unavailable” or DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN | Domain expired or DNS error | Registrar or DNS administrator | What DNS Is and How It Works |
| A registrar's parking page | Domain has expired | Registrar | Step 3 |
| Loading takes a long time, then a timeout | Server Overload or Hosting Outage | Hosting Provider | Step 2 |
| “Account suspended” | Account Suspended (Invoice, Limit, Malware) | Hosting Provider | Step 4 |
| Status code 500, 502, 503, or 504 | Server error, PHP error, or server capacity | Hosting provider or administrator | status code 500, status code 503 |
| “A critical error has occurred” or a blank page | Plugin, theme, or failed update | You or your administrator | A critical error has occurred |
| “Error connecting to the database” | Database of wp-config.php | Hosting Provider | Error creating a database connection |
| “Your connection is not private” | SSL certificate has expired or is not installed | Hosting Provider | SSL Certificate Expired |
| Page Redirected Too Many Times (ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS) | Redirect Loop After an SSL or Address Change | You or your administrator | SSL Article |
| The homepage works, but other pages return a 404 error | Permalinks or .htaccess | You | Settings > Permalinks save again |
| You can't log in, or you see a CAPTCHA | Login Security After Failed Attempts | Please wait a moment, otherwise contact support | Initial check |
| Google warning or redirection to suspicious sites | Hack | Hack Recovery | WordPress website hacked, now what? |
In the event of a critical error, the malware scanner may also be a factor. With Surver, Imunify immediately locks suspicious files, and very occasionally this affects a plugin file that is actually supposed to be there. So be sure to check, and always note the exact message and the time.
Step-by-Step Guide: From the Outside In
Work from the outside in, and don’t change anything on your site until you know where the problem lies. If a house has no power, you first check to see if the whole street is dark, then whether the bill has been paid, and only then do you open the meter box. If you panic and disable plugins or restore a backup, you’ll often make the cause impossible to find.
- Check to see if the site isn't loading only for you.
- Check your hosting provider's status page to see if there is an outage or scheduled maintenance.
- Check with your registrar or via WHOIS to see if your domain is active and if the nameservers have been changed recently (see what DNS is and how it works).
- Check your hosting control panel to make sure your account is active and that your disk space isn't full.
- Look up the error message in the table and in the error log. For Surver, that's the file
error_login the folder where the error occurred, or Raw Access in cPanel. - Check what was the last thing that changed. After an update, follow these steps: Site Down After an Update.
- If you can't figure it out after half an hour, contact your hosting provider or administrator.
A Restore a backup is only the very last step, once you know what's wrong. Don't just turn on debug mode on a live site, because then visitors will see the errors too. You can also have errors handled via WordPress Management.
The causes I encounter most often
Most outages fall into five categories, and administrative causes are the ones most often overlooked. You’ll notice a hosting outage when you get a timeout, and there’s little you can do about it other than wait. If your domain has expired, the problem lies outside the hosting service, and your site will simply appear to have disappeared. After a DNS change, the new address won’t work everywhere at once; DNS propagation depends on the TTL, so sometimes waiting is the only solution.
I also regularly see hosting accounts suspended due to an unpaid invoice or an exceeded limit, as well as full disk space that prevents WordPress from writing anything to the disk. A failed update usually results in a critical error or a blank page. Server capacity can be exhausted by a traffic spike or a DDoS attack. If this happens on a regular basis, scale up to your own resources with managed cloud hosting.
If your site is hacked, never just restore a backup, because that will bring the security breach along with it. First, read about what to do if your WordPress website has been hacked, or let us clean it up for you via WordPress hacked.
After the Outage: Google, Visitors, and Next Time
A brief outage won't permanently harm your search visibility, but pages that remain inaccessible for an extended period may be removed from Google's index. After the issue is resolved, check Search Console > Pages and in the crawl statistics. If it took a long time, post a brief message on social media saying that you're available again. For orders and ads, read more at online store offline.
At Surver, we routinely monitor the servers and report outages and maintenance on status.surver.nl. If you need to revert to a previous version, you can restore a backup yourself at no cost using JetBackup 5 in cPanel—separately for files, databases, or email accounts. Be sure to back up the current state first, as it isn’t saved automatically. If you’re having trouble, email or chat with us, or call us on weekdays in case of an emergency. You can read more about this at Managed WordPress Hosting and in What is managed WordPress hosting?.
Above all, you want to know about the next outage before your customers do. Suppose uptime monitoring Set up notifications on your phone, test updates in a staging environment first, and keep a web application firewall (WAF) active to protect against attacks. Set your domain to auto-renew. For a specific error message, check Troubleshooting WordPress Errors.
Frequently Asked Questions
My domain has expired—have I lost it?
Usually not right away. Registrars and SIDN (for .nl domains) have a grace period during which you can still restore an expired domain. Contact your registrar right away.
How long will it take for my website to be back online?
That depends entirely on the cause. If there's a hosting issue, you can track the progress our status page. After a DNS change, your site will usually be up and running everywhere within a few hours, and if your DNS is hosted by Surver, the default TTL is 600 seconds. By way of comparison, 99.9% uptime means a maximum of about 8.8 hours of downtime per year.
Will I receive a notification from Surver if my site goes offline?
Surver monitors the servers for all hosting packages. If you purchase our WordPress maintenance and management services, we’ll check your site every minute. If you only have hosting, set up your own uptime monitoring so you’ll know as soon as your website goes down.
