Before concluding there is an outage, five checks eliminate the vast majority of causes. They take less than ten minutes and save you waiting for an answer for nothing.
Five checks, in this order
- Another device, another network. Open the site through a phone's tethering. If the site responds there, the problem is at your end — router, local network, your provider's cache — and not on the server.
- Another browser, or a private window. That rules out the browser's cache and extensions.
- The exact address. With and without
www, overhttp://and overhttps://. A single one of the four forms failing immediately points the diagnosis. - The state of your account. An unpaid invoice leads to a suspension after a reminder. Check the invoices section of your client area — it is a real cause, and it is settled in a moment.
- What changed. An update, an installed extension, an uploaded file, a configuration change in the preceding hours. In most cases, the outage has an author, and it is the last change.
Identifying the symptom
| What you see | What it means | The first move |
|---|---|---|
| Entirely blank page | The application stopped without saying anything | Undo the last change |
| Error 500 | The application failed | Read the site's error log |
| Error 403 | Access is refused | Check the file's or folder's permissions |
| Error 404 across the whole site | The files are not where they are being looked for | Check the publication folder |
| "Server not found" | The domain leads nowhere | Check the domain's connection |
| The timeout is exceeded | The page takes too long to build | See the causes of slowness |
| A completely different site shows | Propagation is under way, or the domain points elsewhere | Wait, then check the values |
| "Database connection error" | The site can no longer find its database | Check the credentials in the configuration file |
| "Your connection is not private" | The certificate is not in place or does not match | See the certificate guide |
The detail of each code is in Understanding error messages.
If you have just changed something
Go back before trying anything else. Disable the last installed extension, put the old file back, undo the update. An outage whose cause is known can be repaired; an outage to which three improvised repairs have been added cannot.
What is not an outage
- Propagation under way: the site responds for some and not for others — see Connecting your domain name.
- A cache: yours, your browser's, or your content management system's. Empty them before concluding.
- A single page at fault: if the rest of the site responds, the server is fine; the page or its content is the culprit.
Letting us know
Open a ticket with:
- the domain name;
- the exact address of a failing page;
- the displayed message, copied word for word;
- the date and time you noticed it;
- what changed just before, even if it seems unrelated;
- the real impact — a showcase and a shop in the middle of the day are not approached the same way.