We’ve all been there. You are browsing a website, and maybe you are getting ready to purchase something, and suddenly that website stops working. This is always a frustrating experience.
Or maybe this keeps happening to your own website, and your visitors are the ones left frustrated.
In this blog post, I’m going to briefly write about some reasons why your website might crash, and what you can do about it. Let’s get started!
Your website produces a “404 Not Found” Error Message
The 404 Not Found HTTP response code indicates that the webserver couldn’t find the page (or files) that you requested. To fix this error message, you might need to remove – or change – a link on your website. Maybe you linked to a page that is not found in an old blog post, but then several months later, you deleted the page. Or maybe you moved a page from 1 URL to another.
Whatever the reason, for SEO purposes – as well as your users’ experience, you should always try to fix any Page Not Found issues on your website.
Your website times out
Website timeouts can happen for a variety of reasons. It is possible that the server that hosts your website just got a large, sudden influx of new visitors all at once. Maybe a popular blog linked to your website – or another website that is hosted on the same server.
Another reason this can occur is if the web server – or the network that supports it – crashed. Perhaps a hard drive failed, or a network switch died that the server is connected to.
Regardless, if your website is timing out, then your web hosting provider is probably having a bad day. Or, maybe they just don’t care. Some shared web hosting providers try to stuff as many websites onto a single server as possible, thereby helping to create a perfect storm of events when a lot of websites on the same server get a lot of traffic all at once.
If timeouts are rare for your website, then be patient with your web hosting provider. Chances are, they are doing the best they can to bring your website back online. Despite what some companies will tell you, there is no such thing as a website that can stay online 100% of the time. Even if rare and/or brief, there will be periods when your website is unavailable.
If timeouts are a somewhat regular occurrence, then you need better web hosting. Either upgrade your hosting plan with your current provider, or switch to a completely new web hosting provider, such as Barred Owl Web.
You see a strange error message on your website
If you see a message such as one of the following, then you need to contact your web hosting provider – and/or your web developer – right away:
- Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function
- PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{‘ in index.php on line 35
These errors indicate that there is a problem with the website code. It can only be fixed by fixing your code. PHP is a common programming language that hels to power many – if not the majority – of websites on the internet today. Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Drupal, and Learning Management Systems such as Moodle all use PHP.
These are just a few of the reasons why your website might crash. I hope this has been helpful.
If we can be of assistance, visit https://barredowlweb.com/services to get started.