Help! My Website is Down

Tips on choosing hosting companies & what to do if your website is down.

Help! My Website is Down

Every website experiences downtime for varying reasons. How do you know when your site is down? Will your hosting company tell you? Not likely. I recommend using a free monitoring service so do a search for “monitor my website” to find a service that does this . Every week you’ll receive a detailed report. If your site goes down for any reason you will receive an email right away. If you notice that your site is down frequently, this will be an indication that you need to start hunting for a better hosting company.

What to do if your website is down? First, go to the website of your hosting company and see if something is posted regarding the downtime. There could be a power outage or some type of natural disaster. If you don’t get an answer from the site – call the 800# and ask when your site will be back up. OR you can send an email if they have live chats. Remember, if your site is down it is likely many others will be down so the phones and email lines may be busy. Calling your web company won’t be helpful unless they are the ones who actually host your website.

There so many hosting companies to choose from - how does one decide? Start by making a check list of what is important to you. Here is a sample check list to get you started, add or subtract what fits for your priorities.

24/7 live phone support
Rapid response to your questions
Location of server – local, out-of-state or out-of-country
Bandwidth maximums
Good, easy-to-understand statistics included
Audio streaming supported
99.9% uptime

If the first checkbox is important to you – call the company at different times and ask questions. See if the phone support meets your expectations. If statistics are important, ask to see a sample of the statistics they provide. You can get all of the above and more for less than $10/month. Hosting used to cost more. A few years ago, I used to pay $50-100 a month and paid extra for statistics. Prices have come down quite a bit in the past two years.

Three tips when switching hosts:

1. Have a complete backup of your website – just in case!
2. Don’t wait until the renewal date with your current company. Give yourself some time to make the switch.
3. This is not a job for most do-it-yourselfers. Ask a professional web company to help you with this task to avoid any downtime or unexpected snafus.

Will switching hosts affect your search engine ranking? No, where your site is hosted doesn’t have anything to do with search engine rankings.

Do you have forms on your website that are submitted to you by visitors or clients? Some typical forms include Contact Us, Registrations & Request for Quotes. Did you know that these forms are tied in directly with the server? This means that if you decide to switch hosting companies, the forms may not work with the new host. The forms will need to be recoded to the new server.

Now you’ve learned a little bit about hosting, forms and servers. Knowing some of these simple basics will help you understand if something goes awry with your website.