Few things destroy your online reputation faster than your website crashing. Why? Because every time your website crashes, you are turning a prospect or a customer into a frustrated user ready to give your competition their business.
But the question is: “Why is my website crashing?”
Why is my website crashing?
Your website is crashing for one of the following reasons:
- Cheap hosting – Websites hosted on cheap hosting accounts often crash. Many hosting companies overload their servers to maximize profit. But, when your site shares the same resources with thousands of websites, sooner or later websites will start crashing.
- DNS errors – A misconfiguration in your DNS zone file could result in your website crashing.
- Underpowered web server – A lot of website traffic is good news for your business. Unfortunately, if your server cannot handle to onslaught of traffic, your website will crash.
- Expired domain – An expired domain is one of the most common reasons for a crashing website. Keep an eye on your domain registration. Never let an expired domain bring your website down.
- Software errors – Even one incorrect character can crash your website. Yes, a type has brought down some of the largest websites in the world.
- Malfunctioning plugins – WordPress websites rely on plugins. Although most plugins work fine, some of them may crash your site.
- DOS or Denial Of Service attack – DOS attacks crash servers all the time. All businesses, large and small, are vulnerable. A DOS attack could make your site unusable for hours, days, or even weeks if you don’t have the right protections in place.
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Why is my web page crashing?
Your web page is crashing because of:
- Low-quality website hosting
- DNS misconfiguration
- Expired domain
- Unexpectedly high website traffic
- Errors in code
- Corrupted files
- Plugin errors
- PHP incompatibility
- DOS attacks
Why is my website down?
Your website is down because of a hosting problem, an expired domain name, malware, DNS misconfiguration, software error, DDoS attack, corrupt files, or unexpectedly high load on the web server.
Why is my Shopify website down?
Your Shopify website is down because of an expired domain name, a hosting problem, unexpectedly high load on the web server, malware, DNS misconfiguration, software error, DDoS attack, or corrupt files.
Other reasons for your Shopify site to be down are:
- Corrupted files – Code mistakes, discrepancies, or corrupted files may crash your Shopify website.
- Unverified domain – Perhaps the email you have used for your Shopify store doesn’t match the email address associated with your domain name.
- Incompatible Themes or Apps – Third part apps are known to crash sites from time to time. The crash is usually caused by incompatibility issues, resulting in a malfunctioning Shopify store.
- Accidental deletion – If you have deleted the wrong file, you might have crashed your Shopify site. But, once you have restored the file, your website should be online again.
Why is my WordPress website down?
Your website is down because of corrupt files, software error, an expired domain name, malware, a hosting problem, unexpectedly high traffic, DNS misconfiguration, or a DDoS attack.
Other reasons for your WordPress website to the crash are:
- No internet access – Your WordPress site may be up, but it will seem like you have a crashed site if your internet connection is down.
- Corrupted files – Corrupt files, code typos, or discrepancies may crash your WordPress site.
- Expired domain – Perhaps you forgot to renew your domain name, and now your site is down.
- Incompatible theme – A problem with your site theme could easily crash your WordPress site. The crash is usually caused by an error in the theme.
- Accidental deletion – If you have deleted the wrong file, you might have crashed your WordPress site. But, once you have restored the file, your site should be online again.
Do you want to prevent your website from crashing?
The best websites work like well-adjusted high-performance machines.
Do you want your website to run like a high-performance machine that creates more leads and grows your sales?
In order to harness the internet’s power – whether for the sake of offering your voice to the world or to bring customers to your site – it is important to understand how to increase your website’s performance. The internet is a system just like any other and operates on certain principles and tendencies. Learning to use the logic of the internet can save you time, energy, and money. In today’s internet-based economy, developing some fundamental website building skills or hiring someone with those skills goes a long to establishing a successful business.
How Search Engines Work
A good first step to increase your website’s performance is to understand how people use the internet to find your website. People find your website using search engines. Examples of popular search engines include Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The world wide web has been compared to a subway system where each website is like a train stop. Search engines send out what are commonly called “crawlers” to travel through the subway system and send back data on all the stops. Search engines use this data to create indexes of ranked websites.
The more content you have the more data a crawler has to work with and the more likely a search engine will rank your website on the index. The higher ranking you have on a search engine’s index, the better chance people will have to find your website.
We can help you increase your website’s performance. Ask us how?
New Content is Key
It is important that you have new content on your website to hold your audience’s attention. One way to increase your website’s performance is to routinely post new content on your website. This can be achieved in several different ways, but common practices include posting new product reviews, posting news stories in your particular niche, and periodically featuring opinion and analysis pieces relevant to the purpose of your website. If you cannot keep up with running your business and maintaining as current a website as possible, there is a growing work force consisting of content writers, graphic designers, and website administrators that can help you maintain an enticing web presence. It is worth the investment to hire help for your website.
Focus on Your Audience
Remember that the purpose of your website is to engage a particular audience. All of your decisions regarding the appearance of the website, content posted on the website, and even the platforms you use to promote your website must keep your target audience in mind. One way to think about the total effect your website might have on a viewer is to consider an overall theme for your website. If you offer corporate business consulting services, for example, your website might have a different look and feel than someone selling car detailing services.
Promote Your Website
No one will find your website – except through dumb luck – if you are not actively putting the word out. Put your website’s address on your business card, feature it on your business’s billboard, and tell your current customer about it. Access other internet platforms like social media to tell the world about your website. Offer discounts and send out coupons that funnel potential customers into your website. Ask your partners and related businesses to link to your website and offer to link to theirs. Search engines will take notice of increased traffic to your website and will rank your website higher which will in turn create even more traffic.
Lessons Learned About Crashing Websites
Website crashing can hurt your sales and destroy your reputation. So it is important to understand the reasons for website crashing. Once you know why websites crash, you are on your way to preventing website crashes.
In conclusion, here are some of the most important steps to take to keep your website running like a smooth machine:
When doing code changes, verify the code is correct on a staging server. Testing your code in a non-production environment guarantees that your code errors won’t crash your site.
Only use absolutely necessary plugins. Research each plugin to make sure it’s reliable. Once you no longer need a plugin, uninstall it from your WordPress site. Keep your plugins updated.
Schedule the domain renewal on your calendar. Even better, set your domain to auto-renew. Domain renewal is a simple task. So, don’t let an expired domain bring your website down. Renewing your domain name is the easiest way to avoid website downtimes.
Find a reliable hosting company. Virtually all hosting review sites are affiliate sites. Unfortunately, they are motivated by sales commissions. Therefore, it’s not in their best interest to recommend you the best hosting providers.
Use a content distribution network or CDN so that you don’t experience website crashes due to an unexpected surge in traffic. You can use a better quality hosting service or upgrade your hosting plan with more resources.
Deploy antivirus software and implement a robust network security infrastructure to keep your website online.
Keep WordPress updated. You should install every new WordPress update without delay to protect against website crashes.
Finally, hire an external service provider if you don’t have an internal web developer. Website maintenance is a critical part of avoiding website crashes.
Think of your website as a complex system, similar to a house, that needs regular maintenance to work at its best. If you take good care of your website, it is unlikely to crash.
We can help you increase your website’s performance. Ask us about our website maintenance service.
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