my website is down: five minutes of triage before panic

web · 2026-09-06 · 3 min

first, check whether it is down for everyone or only for you. open the site on your phone with wifi turned off. if it loads there, the problem is your network, your browser or a cached dns record, and nothing on the server needs fixing.

if it is down everywhere: hosting status, domain expiry, dns, in that order. five minutes saves an hour of guessing.

the first three checks

one: the host's status page, usually at status.hostname.com. if there is an incident, you have your answer and you wait.

two: the domain. log into the registrar and look at the expiry date and the nameservers. an expired domain is the most common self-inflicted outage, and the one that gets expensive.

three: dns. dnschecker.org shows whether the record resolves in different countries. if it resolves in some places and not others, you are looking at propagation, which fixes itself in hours, typically within a day. if it resolves nowhere, the record is wrong or the nameservers are wrong.

when it is the host

open a ticket with three things: the url, the exact error text, and the time it started with your timezone. paste the text, not a screenshot of it. ask whether it is a server-wide issue.

then do nothing. do not reinstall, do not restore a backup, do not change dns while you wait. you will lose the evidence and turn a twenty-minute incident into a two-day one.

when it is the domain

if it expired, renew it and wait. the timing is not yours. if you changed nameservers in the last 48 hours, that is the cause, and the fix is patience, not another change.

if a payment failed, fix the payment before anything else. and check whose email is on the account: if it is the designer's old address, you cannot even reset the password. the domain should be in your name, in an account you control.

the first ten minutes

minute 0: hard refresh, then a second browser, then a private window. that rules out cache, extensions and a stale login. if it loads in one of the three, stop: it is your device.

minute 1: the phone, wifi off, mobile data on. if it loads there, the site is up and the problem is your network or your dns resolver. if it fails there too, keep going.

minutes 2 to 4: the checks that look too basic. is the address right, with and without www? an expired certificate gives a warning that many people describe as "the site is down", so look at the padlock and the certificate dates. then the host status page.

minutes 5 to 7: dns. ask a public resolver instead of your own, with nslookup followed by your domain and 1.1.1.1, or a site like dnschecker. no answer means the record or the nameservers, not the hosting. an answer pointing somewhere unexpected means someone changed something.

minutes 8 to 10: the response. a command line tool such as curl, asking only for the headers, shows the status code and the server without a browser. 503 from the host, 522 from a proxy, 403 from a firewall: three different tickets.

what to write to support: the url, the exact text of the error, the time with your timezone, what you already checked, and whether it happens on mobile data too. say what you did not touch. ask if it is server-wide, and ask for an estimate rather than a promise.

faq

how do i know if it is dns?

the site does not load but the host says it is online, or it loads for some people and not others. check the record from two locations and compare the nameservers with the ones the host gave you.

will a few hours of downtime hurt my ranking?

a short outage is not a penalty. google revisits, and if the site returns with the same content it usually comes back where it was. the risk is a long outage, or a "down for maintenance" page that stays up for a month.

should i switch hosting immediately?

no. first find out what broke. switching during an incident adds a second variable to a problem you have not diagnosed, and the new host will inherit the same dns. move later, calmly. domain and hosting are different things, and an unpaid bill has its own timeline.

why is my website not loading?

in most cases it is one of three things: your own connection or dns, an expired domain or certificate, or an incident at the host. test on mobile data, check the certificate and the host status page, then look at the dns from a public resolver. ten minutes of checks give you enough to write a ticket that gets an answer.