What to Do When You Can't Open Your Website

Step 1: Check if it is only you

1. Open your site on your phone using mobile data, not Wi-Fi.
2. Ask a friend in another place to open it.
3. Use a free "is it down" website checker.

If others can open it, the problem is on your side. If nobody can, the problem is with the site.

If only you cannot open it

1. Check your internet. Open another site.
2. Clear your browser cache. The cache is a store of saved pages. Old saved pages can cause problems.
3. Try a private window or a different browser.
4. Restart your router.
5. Clear your DNS cache. On Windows, run this in Command Prompt.

ipconfig /flushdns

This empties the saved DNS answers on your computer. DNS is like a phone book for the internet. It turns a website name into a number.

If nobody can open it

1. Log in to the client area.
2. Open Services and check that your hosting is active. A service that is overdue or suspended will not load.
3. Open Domains and check that your domain has not expired.
4. Check the nameservers on your domain. They must match the ones in your welcome email.
5. If you changed nameservers recently, wait up to 48 hours. This is called DNS propagation.

Read the error message

• 404 Not Found: the page or file is missing.
• 403 Forbidden: file permissions or a block are stopping access.
• 500 Internal Server Error: a script or the .htaccess file has a mistake.
• 503 Service Unavailable: the server is too busy or being worked on.
• Your connection is not private: the SSL certificate has a problem.

Other common causes

• A recent plugin or theme update broke the site.
• Your IP address was blocked by a firewall after too many wrong logins.
• Your site files were deleted or changed.

Quick recap

• First, check if the problem is only on your side.
• Clear cache, try another network and flush DNS.
• Check that hosting and domain are active and nameservers are right.
• Read the error code and send it to support.