Before You Press Anything, Read This

The site isn’t loading, and your first instinct is to start pressing things. Resist it. Most of the damage done during a website outage happens in the ten minutes after somebody panics.

First, check it’s actually down

Sites appear broken for reasons that have nothing to do with the site. Your internet connection, your browser’s cache, or a router that needs a restart will all produce the same blank screen.

Try the site on your phone using mobile data rather than your wi-fi. If it loads there, the problem is on your end, not the website’s. A free tool like downforeveryoneorjustme.com will confirm it from outside.

Write down exactly what you see

This is the single most useful thing you can do. Take a screenshot. Note the exact wording of any error message, the time it started, and the page you were on. “The site’s broken” gives whoever helps you nothing to work with. “Error 500 on the contact page since about 9:15 this morning” cuts the diagnosis time dramatically.

Think about what changed

Websites rarely break at random. Something usually changed shortly beforehand. Did you or a colleague update a plugin, edit a page, install something new, or change a setting? Did a hosting invoice go unpaid? Did a domain name come up for renewal?

If you know what changed, say so straight away, even if you’re embarrassed about it. Nobody’s judging, and it’s usually the answer.

What not to do

• Don’t install a plugin that promises to fix it
• Don’t delete anything
• Don’t restore a backup yourself unless you know exactly what the backup contains and when it was taken
• Don’t start changing hosting settings

Each of these can turn a ten-minute fix into a much longer one, because now there are two problems: the original fault, and whatever was done to it afterwards.

Then make one phone call

Contact whoever looks after your site. If that’s me, ring rather than email if it’s urgent. Bring your screenshot, your timings and your “what changed” answer, and in most cases we’ll have a diagnosis before the call ends.

Why waiting rarely helps

Sites that are down don’t heal. The only thing that changes while you wait is that search engines notice, customers who tried to reach you go elsewhere, and, if the cause is a security problem, whoever got in has longer to make themselves comfortable. Ten quiet minutes of gathering information is well spent. Ten hours of hoping is not.