Website down? Here is a 10-minute checklist.

The short answer

First confirm the website is down for everyone: open it on your phone with Wi-Fi switched off. If it loads there, the problem is your computer or your network, not the website.

If it is down everywhere, read the exact message on the screen, because it points to the cause: an expired domain or certificate, a suspended hosting account, a server that stopped answering, or a WordPress error after an update. Then call the right person with that message in hand.

Minute 1: is the website down for everyone, or just you?

• Open the site on your phone with Wi-Fi off, so it uses the mobile network.
• Try a different browser, or a private window.
• Ask someone in another place to try it.

If it works everywhere except your office, the site is up. Restart the router and clear the browser cache. If someone in the office recently mistyped a password several times, the server’s firewall may have blocked your office’s internet address; the host can clear that.

Minute 2: read the error message

The words on the screen are the best clue you have. Take a screenshot, then match it:

• “This site can’t be reached” or “server IP address could not be found”. The domain is not pointing anywhere. Check whether it has expired or whether someone changed its DNS; see domain expired.
• “Your connection is not private”. Usually the SSL certificate has expired or does not match the address, though Chrome Help notes the cause can also be the network or the visitor’s device; see Not secure warnings and expired SSL.
• A red “Deceptive site ahead” or “Dangerous site” screen. Google has flagged the site; see how to clear the warning.
• “There has been a critical error on this website.” WordPress hit a fatal error, usually from a plugin, a theme or a PHP change. WordPress emails the site’s admin address a link to recovery mode.
• “Error establishing a database connection.” WordPress cannot reach its database. WordPress’s troubleshooting guide says the usual cause is wrong details in wp-config.php; if those are right, the database server may be down or over its quota, which is a call to your host.
• 500 Internal Server Error. The server hit a problem it could not handle. On a WordPress site that often means a plugin, a theme or a configuration file.
• 502, 503 or 504. A server in the chain is overloaded, down for maintenance, or did not answer in time.
• 403 Forbidden. The server is refusing access, often because of file permissions or a security rule.
• A Cloudflare page with error 521, 522, 523 or 524. Cloudflare is working; the server behind it is down, unreachable or too slow to respond, as Cloudflare’s error reference explains.
• A page from your host saying the account is suspended. Only the host can lift it, and its email should say why.
• A completely blank white page. WordPress notes that both PHP errors and database errors can show up this way.

Minutes 3 to 5: check the domain and the certificate

Look the domain up with the free domain and website ownership lookup. It shows the expiry date, the registrar and the nameservers. An expired domain, or nameservers that changed without your knowledge, explains a site that vanished overnight.

Then check the certificate’s expiry date by clicking the icon beside the address in your browser. Certificates last far less time than they used to: the CA/Browser Forum’s Baseline Requirements cap new public certificates at 200 days since March 15, 2026, so a certificate that stopped renewing itself catches up with you quickly.

Minutes 6 to 7: check the hosting account

• Look for an email from your host about billing, a suspension or maintenance.
• Check the host’s status page for an outage.
• Log in to the hosting panel and look for a full disk or a database over its quota.
• If the site uses Cloudflare, check that the DNS records still point at the right server.

Minutes 8 to 10: if it is a WordPress site

Ask what changed. A great many WordPress outages follow an update, a new plugin, a theme edit or the host changing the PHP version.

1. Check the inbox of the site’s admin email for the message WordPress sends after a fatal error. Its recovery mode link lets you log in and switch off the plugin or theme that caused it.
2. No email? Using the host’s file manager or SFTP, rename the plugins folder inside wp-content. That switches every plugin off at once. If the site comes back, rename the folder back and turn the plugins on one at a time to find the culprit.
3. Do not restore an old backup in a hurry. If the cause was a hack, a backup can put it straight back, and anything added since that backup is lost.

If you cannot get in, or it is a store taking orders, WordPress repair is where I pick it up, and a plugin update broke my site covers the most common cause in detail.

What to tell whoever fixes it

Five facts save the first half hour of any repair:

• The exact address that is down, and whether every page is affected or only some.
• When it started.
• The exact error, as a screenshot.
• What changed just before: an update, a new plugin, a failed payment, a DNS change.
• Who your host and domain registrar are, and whether you have a recent backup.

How long can a website be down before Google notices?

There is no fixed number of hours or days. The effect depends on what the server sends back and how long the outage lasts.

• Server errors (500, 502, 503, 504). Google’s crawling documentation says these make its crawler slow down, and that pages already in the index are kept at first but eventually dropped if the errors persist.
• Not found or forbidden (404, 403 and other 4xx). Google does not index pages that return these and stops using the address over time.
• Planned or urgent downtime. For a closure of a day or two, Google’s guidance on pausing a site recommends a 503 status with a Retry-After header, and it says a site should only be fully offline for a few days at most.

So a brief outage that returns a server error is usually recoverable, while a long one, or errors that tell Google your pages are gone, can cost more than the visitors you missed.

Stop finding out from customers

The worst way to learn your website is down is from a customer. Every site I host is checked from outside every 60 seconds, straight from the server so a cached copy cannot hide an outage, and a real problem alerts my phone. That is the core of managed WordPress hosting, for Louisville businesses and clients anywhere in the country: the person who notices the problem is the person who fixes it.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my website down but my email still works?

Your email is probably hosted somewhere else, such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, so only the web server is affected. If the website and the email stopped at the same time, look at the domain and its DNS first.

Why does my site work on my phone but not on my computer?

Then the site is up and something local is in the way: a cached error in the browser, your office network, or a firewall that blocked your internet address. Try a private window and another network.

My host says everything is fine, but the site is still down.

Send them the exact error and the time it started, and ask them to check the error log for your account. If Cloudflare or another service sits in front of the site, check it too, because the fault can be between the two.

Can too much traffic take a website down?

Yes. A sudden rush can use up what the server can handle, which shows up as slow pages, 503 errors or timeouts. Page caching and a server sized for the busy days are the fix.

How do I find out the moment my site goes down?

Use an uptime monitor that checks the site from outside every minute or so and alerts you by text or app. Every site I host has one.