What to do if your site is down

[Jim]

What to do if your site is down
If for any reason you cannot point to your site in your web browser, here is a list of things you can do to troubleshoot the problem. It is recommended that you follow the steps in the order presented.


Check our Network Status Page

Point your browser to our Network Status Page. You will be able to check the state of health of our entire network. Any know outages will be posted there, usually after a fifteen minute outage.

Ping your site

Try pinging your site. Ping is a program that "bounces" a request off of another computer/server over the internet to see if the remote computer is responding. To ping your site, click Start>Run and enter command. Click OK. Then type ping yoursite.com (where yoursite.com is your actual domain). Hit Enter on your keyboard. The results will show 4 attempts to send a packet to your site. If your site is reachable, it will show no lost packets.

Do a traceroute

Perform a traceroute on your site. A traceroute is a utility which allows you to literally trace your connection to a server/computer. It measures the time it takes to reach each point needed for the connection. There are many online tools which will allow you to perform the traceroute. Alternatively, you can do it yourself. To traceroute your site, click Start>Run and enter command. Click OK. Then type tracert yoursite.com (where yoursite.com is your actual domain). Hit Enter on your keyboard. The results will show you the number of hops between your local computer and your site server. It can give you a good indication of any connectivity disruption along the way.

Try surfing other sites

Try pointing to other sites in your browser. It's entirely possible your ISP is experiencing connectivity problems, in which case the issue is with your Internet connection rather than your site's connectivity.

Make sure your DNS is configured properly

Ensure that you have properly configured your DNS records in your domain name account. Login to your account at your domain registrar and double-check the nameservers. You can also perform a whois online to check the records attached to your domain. Two websites you can check DNS from are located here & here. You should get a report back showing any problems with your website dns.

Check that your DNS has fully propagated

If you have just recently set up your hosting account with us, your site DNS records may not have fully propagated yet. It generally takes 24-72 hours for all the root servers around the world to update any changes in your DNS records. If you have a name based hosting account, try pointing to http://yourIP/~username using the IP and username provided in your Welcome Email. If you have an IP based hosting account, try pointing to http://yourIP. Assuming you have uploaded your site files to the server properly, you should be able to see your site. If so, it just means you will have to wait a bit longer for DNS to fully propagate.

Send in a support ticket

If all else fails, send in a support ticket to our Help Desk.

Call us by telephone

Call us by telephone so that we may assist you in finding the source of the problem. Our telephone number is 419-388-9210 (Ohio, USA)