As any webmaster will tell you, there are few things as unpleasing as when the site you’ve worked so hard on experiences downtime or other issues. Some of the potential problems that may be caused by web hosting include poor customer traffic, low sales, and poor reputation. Luckily, most of the hosting issues are quite easy to solve if you know where to start looking for the solution. This article aims at offering some possible solutions to some of the most common web hosting issues.
Upon visiting the website, the message that the site is down or does not load can be seen.
The most disturbing hosting issue is when your entire website is offline or some pages will not load. Well, there are several considerations that may go wrong in this case. Firstly, visit your hosting provider’s system status page to determine if it is experiencing a problem. Most organizations have a status page that provides details on the status and uptime of servers at the company. If no problems are cited, attempt to reboot your web server through your control panel for your hosting service. Occasionally, a server process can become unresponsive, and a restart returns the system to normalcy.
If the above steps do not work and your site remains offline, then the time is to contact the technical support department of your web host. It could be an issue with the account settings, domain settings, or there may be other backend factors to consider. In most cases, a few minutes on the phone with support or an instant messenger can solve website loading issues rather fast if the problem is not a widespread hosting provider downtime.
Site Loading Slowly
Website that takes a long time to load gets a lot of bounces and thus the visitors are not pleased with what they find. Databases that have not been fine-tuned, insufficient server capacity, improper PHP scripting, and long code are all also causes of slowness. First of all, you can use online tools such as Pingdom or GTmetrix to get the real page loading speed. If pages start to render within 2-3 seconds, then, most probably, it is a speed problem.
Some tips which can be followed include proper tuning of the database or enabling caching of the content management system. Choosing a faster web host plan with more resources can also enhance speed. Almost all the hosting companies offer the option to upgrade from shared to VPS or dedicated hosting services which have more computing power and RAM. In the last steps, consult with a developer to check the website’s code to optimize scripts and plugins that may be heavy.
Error Messages Appearing
Every website owner would not be happy to see ugly internal server errors, database connection fail, or “500” errors all over their website. These warnings mean there is a technical issue that needs to be addressed. Begin with reviewing the error logs in cPanel or your CMS system admin section. In fact, the specific error message itself can point one to the guilty party more often than not. Such events as failed database calls, file permission issues, PHP version conflicts and problematic .htaccess rules usually cause the error.
The first thing you should do is go online and search for the error text and message to get solutions. It is also a possibility that if you have recently made changes to the backend or installed new plugins, rolling back may solve the issue. On issues that require a deeper look such as PHP compatibility issues, it might be necessary to open a support ticket to have your hosting provider look into it and adjust the server settings.
Problems Sending/Receiving Email
In the case of your web-based email forms and contact forms not sending messages, there may be a few reasons. Ensure that the email address and SMTP settings provided in your forms correspond to the correct mail server credentials in your hosting CPanel. At times, the web developers set the SMTP credentials that may later change, this leads to the emails getting undelivered until the correct credentials are updated.
Also, many hosting providers include spam filters and blocks for sending emails from sites at the highest possible rate. The primary aim is to reduce the number of abused sent by spammers. However, at times, normal emails get filtered in spam because of the presence of some specific keywords. You should go to your control panel and navigate to the “email logs” section and see if the sent messages appear as flagged or bounced. Whitelisting your own IP address in the hosting account can solve issues related to wrong spam blocking.
Applying these troubleshooting techniques should help determine and fix some of the most recurrent web hosting challenges that site owners are likely to encounter. It is important to monitor such patterns with any ongoing problems and do not shy away from using your hosting provider’s technical support as well.
