Site down or broken? You can send an urgent website issue through the inquiry form or read how website recovery works. Requests are handled during business hours (Monday–Friday, 9:00 AM–6:00 PM), with urgent issues first. We don't offer an emergency or out-of-hours service.
Work through these checks in order. Each step rules out a common cause, and the error you see tells you where to look next. Before you change anything, make sure a recent backup exists.
1. Is it down for everyone?
- Open the site on your phone using mobile data, not office Wi-Fi.
- Ask someone in another location to try.
- If it works elsewhere, the problem may be your network, browser cache, or local DNS.
2. Check the domain and DNS
- Has the domain registration expired? Check the account at your domain registrar.
- Were DNS records changed recently, for example during a move to a new host? DNS changes can take time to reach everyone.
3. Check your hosting
- Look at your hosting provider's status page and your hosting account for notices.
- Check whether the account is suspended, unpaid, or over its resource limits.
4. Check the SSL certificate
If the browser warns that the connection is not private, the certificate may have expired or may not match the domain. Renewal is usually done in the hosting account or the certificate provider's account.
5. What changed recently?
Updates to the platform, a plugin, a theme, or the server are the most common trigger. If the problem started right after a change, undoing that change is often the fastest fix, ideally by restoring the backup made before it.
6. Read the error
- 403 Forbidden: the server refuses access. Check file permissions or security rules.
- 404 Not Found: the server can't find the page. Check recent URL or permalink changes.
- 500 Internal Server Error: the server hit a problem it can't handle. Look at the server error log.
- 502 Bad Gateway or 504 Gateway Timeout: a server in the chain got no valid or timely response. Often a hosting or server issue.
- 503 Service Unavailable: the server is not ready, often because of maintenance or overload.
7. If the site runs on WordPress
- WordPress documentation lists a corrupted
.htaccessfile as the most likely cause of an Internal Server Error; it can be renamed and regenerated by saving permalinks. - Deactivate plugins to find a conflict, and switch to a default theme to rule out the theme.
- An increased PHP memory limit can help when memory runs out.
- A "critical error" message and a blank page usually point to a PHP error; check the error log.
What not to do
- Don't delete files or reinstall everything without a backup.
- Don't make several changes at once; you won't know which one helped.
- Don't leave a broken site online for long without a maintenance page. Google advises that a 503 status for temporary unavailability is acceptable only for a short period, a few days at most.
When to get help
If the site is still down after these checks, or you don't have access to the hosting, domain, or admin accounts, it is time for help. What can be recovered depends on the backups and access that exist. See website recovery, or VPS & server management if the site runs on your own server.
Related problems: regaining access to your website.
Sources
- MDN Web Docs, HTTP response status codes (accessed October 4, 2026)
- WordPress Developer Resources, Common WordPress errors (accessed October 4, 2026)
- Google Search Central, Temporarily pause or disable a website (accessed October 4, 2026)