Why a site going down goes wrong
Most of the damage is not the outage. It is the hour spent guessing. People try five fixes at once, change the wrong thing, or wait for someone to answer an email. Meanwhile a buyer finds an error page and calls a competitor.
A routine fixes that. It tells you what to try first, what to leave alone, and when to stop trying and show a holding page.
Website down: what to do in the first 5 minutes
Do one thing first: confirm that it is down for everyone.
- Open the site on your phone using mobile data, not your office Wi-Fi.
- Ask someone on another network to open it.
- Try the home page and one inner page. Is the whole site gone, or one page?
- Note the time. You will need it later.
Many scares end here. A blocked office network or an old copy in your browser can look like an outage. If the site opens elsewhere, tell your team, clear the browser copy and carry on.
If it is down for everyone, our uptime check, which looks at the site every few minutes, raises a down alert. Even so, we confirm by hand.
Minutes 5 to 15: find what changed
A site rarely breaks on its own. Something changed. We look at four places, one at a time:
- The update log. Did a theme, plugin or admin panel (CMS) update go out? Our updates are logged, so this is a short read.
- Recent edits. Did someone change a page, a menu or a setting today?
- Renewal dates. Has the domain, hosting or security certificate lapsed? Our renewal calendar answers this.
- The hosting company. Is there a notice of a fault or maintenance on their side?
We change one thing at a time. If you change three things and the site comes back, you do not know which one fixed it, and you cannot stop it happening again.
Minutes 15 to 30: restore it, or hold it
By now there are two roads. If we know the cause, we undo the last change or restore the last good backup. This is why a backup must have been restored at least once before the day it is needed. A copy that has never been tried is a hope.
If we do not yet know the cause, we do not keep the visitor staring at an error. We put up a simple holding page. It says in plain words that the site is being fixed, and it shows a phone number and a WhatsApp link that work. Then we keep looking.
If you have no maintenance partner, call your hosting company's support first and tell them the time you saw the fault. For the routine that prevents this, see our website maintenance checklist.
What to tell customers while the site is down
Silence loses more enquiries than the outage. While the site is down, someone should answer the phone and WhatsApp as usual. A short message is enough:
- Say that the website is being fixed and that you are still open.
- Give a phone number and a WhatsApp number that work.
- Say when you will update them again.
- Do not guess the cause in public. Say what you know.
Tell the site owner early, too, in plain words: what we see, what we are doing, and when we will write again.
After the fix: test the lead path, then write it down
A site that loads is not a site that works. After any fix we repeat the same four checks at phone width. We fill in the form and send a test enquiry. We tap the call button and check the number. We tap the WhatsApp link. Then we read the test enquiry in the lead record, to see that it arrived once.
Then we write down what happened: the time we saw it, the cause, the fix, and one change that stops it happening again. A two-line note is enough. It turns a bad hour into a rule.
Website not loading: what to do before it happens
The easiest 30 minutes are the ones you never need. Five small habits make them short:
- Keep a backup away from the server, and restore one now and then to prove it works.
- Put the domain, hosting and certificate dates on a calendar with a named owner.
- Try every update on a test copy first.
- Keep a log of changes, so you can see what changed this week.
- Keep your hosting support number and login where more than one person can find it.
Slips we watch for
- Changing many things at once. Fix: change one thing, then look.
- Treating a one-network problem as an outage. Fix: check from a second network first.
- Restoring a backup that was never tried. Fix: restore one on a test copy before you need it.
- A holding page with no phone number. Fix: always show a call and WhatsApp option.
- Saying the site is fixed without a test enquiry. Fix: test the form, call and WhatsApp, then read the lead.
- No note afterwards. Fix: write the cause and the one change that prevents it.
These are slips we plan against. They come from our own framing, not from a named company.
What we measure
- The time the fault was seen, and the time the site was confirmed working.
- Whether the lead-path test passed after the fix.
- Whether the cause was written down, with the one change that prevents it.
We do not promise an uptime figure or a response time on this page. If a number matters to you, ask for it in writing before you sign.
When to call us
If your site is down right now, message us on WhatsApp. If you want to be ready before it happens, our website maintenance services in India page shows what we do each month. If you also want to know what is holding the site back, see how we run a website audit. Or get a free growth plan.
