Your website won’t load. Before you fire off panicked emails, run this five-minute diagnostic in order — most “down” sites come back within the first three steps.
Minute 1: Is it actually down?
Check the site from your phone on mobile data (wifi off). If it loads there, the site is fine — the problem is your network or your browser’s cache. Confirm with isitdownrightnow.com or downforeveryoneorjustme.com. A surprising share of emergencies end here.
Minute 2: What exactly do you see?
The symptom is the diagnosis:
- Browser can’t find the site at all (“server not found”) → domain or DNS problem. Is the domain paid up? Renewal lapses are the classic cause.
- “Error establishing a database connection” → database issue, usually host-side.
- “There has been a critical error” → a plugin or theme crashed, usually after an update.
- Completely blank white page → PHP crash; same suspects as above.
- Security warning page → expired SSL certificate, or the site has been flagged for malware.
- Host’s “account suspended” page → billing or abuse issue with your hosting; call them now.
Minute 3: Check the host’s status page
Search “your host status” — most publish a live status page. If they’re reporting an outage, your job is done: wait, and note the incident for your records. (Frequent host outages are a reason to move, not a fact of life.)
Minute 4: What changed in the last 24 hours?
Sites rarely break spontaneously. Did anyone update a plugin, install something, edit the theme, or change DNS? The most recent change is the prime suspect, and “undo the last change” fixes the majority of self-inflicted outages.
Minute 5: Escalate with a useful report
If it’s still down, contact your host or your maintenance provider with exactly this: what you see (screenshot), when it started, what changed recently, and what you’ve already checked. That report cuts diagnosis time in half.
Make the next one boring
With uptime monitoring, daily backups and someone on call, “the site is down” becomes a notification followed by a fix — not a morning of panic. That’s the entire WP Hero pitch, from R499/month.