If you are having difficulty accessing your website, loading pages or you are seeing strange behaviour, this can be due to a number of reasons - so please check through the following suggestions before contacting us;
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Basic first checks;
- Check that you have typed in your website address correctly into the browser address bar. e.g. https://www.example.com
- TIP: If you are not sure of the address, or to make sure you don't have any typos in the address, try doing a search on Google and then clicking the website link.
- Is your internet connection working correctly? Can you browse to other websites e.g. https://www.google.com? You might want to try restarting your router / computer / phone / device.
- If you have more than one web browser on your machine, e.g. Chrome and Firefox or Internet Explorer / Edge, are you able to use a secondary browser to try to access the website?
- TIP: You can also try to load your website using the browser's incognito or private tab - this may help to identify if there is a cache issue.
- Have you tried to access your website via your mobile phone network (e.g. different from your broadband)
- TIP: turn off the wifi on your phone, then do a google search for your website and click the link. If it loads, it could indicate that the issue is with your wifi or ISP.
- Have you checked your Internet Service Provider's status page to see if they have any service reports?
- If you are not sure who your ISP is, you will need to check who you pay your internet invoice to - e.g. spark, vodafone, slingshot etc...
- Check our status page to see if any service outages have been reported.
- Also check our resolved issues page as sometimes network delays can cause "hangovers"
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Secondary checks;
- Check to see if the website in question is up for everyone else: https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
- Are you able to "ping" your website from e.g. this site: http://tools.pingdom.com/ping/
- Also try to follow these steps: http://www.purpledogdesign.com/clients/knowledgebase/106/Ping-and-traceroute-tests.html
- Can you visit the site from a proxy page (someone else's virtual computer), such as this one: https://www.proxysite.com/
- Are you able to log into your website's cPanel (control panel) - see how to do that
- If you are on mobile data, have you checked to see that data roaming is enabled?
- Have you cleared your browser / device cache (see below)?
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Troubleshooting Steps;
If you are able to browse to your website using the above URLs, this would indicate that the issue is not at all with your sites / the server, but something local to you. In which case, please try the following steps:
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Clearing your browser's cache / cookies
- Have you tried to clear your computer's cache and cookies? Click here to view instructions
- It's important to see if the problem is related to your device / computer before contacting us.
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Check your computer / router firewall is not getting in the way
- Can you load the site from another computer, or another network? If YES, this indicates an issue with your other computer or network - call your IT support
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Flush the DNS on your local machine
Most operating systems and DNS clients will automatically cache IP Addresses and other DNS results, this is done in order to speed up subsequent requests to the same hostname. Sometimes bad results will be cached and therefore need to be cleared from the cache in order for you to communicate with the host correctly. All major operating systems allow you to force this process, outlined below are the common steps you will need to follow in order to flush your DNS cache.
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Internet Service Provider Cache
In the same way that your web browser has a cache of recent web pages, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) may also use caching techniques on your behalf. In some (rare) cases, even though you are using shift-refresh to get new data from a webpage, the pages still seem to be old. This may be because your ISP has a cache and their cache may not be set up quite right, and they are not downloading the latest web pages.
- When you encounter this problem you will have to communicate with your ISP to fix this problem
- Give them the address of your website and tell them you have completed all of the tests above
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Getting Support
If you have been unable to resolve the issue by following the above steps, please do open a support ticket so that we may assist you.
When contacting us, it is extremely helpful if you can provide as much information as possible;
- Time / date / nature of the error
- What you have tried to resolve it
- Provide the exact steps to reproducing the error
- Make a screenshot of any error messages you are seeing
- Provide us with your IP address so that we can set up a trace http://www.whatsmyip.org/
- Who your ISP is (i.e. who do you pay your broadband bill to?)