Executive Chronicles | The Most Common Web Hosting Issues | Web hosting is a complicated business where a lot of things can go wrong. It takes a lot of experience to be able to put out the many fires that occur when hosting a website, so if you’re not going to let the experts like Planet Hippo fix your problems for you, then you’re going to have to go at it alone. If you want to go it alone and be stubborn, then you need to know the common problems and how to fix them. Even then, you will probably need to phone the experts at some point because like I said, it takes experience, which you don’t have. Two hosting providers are being compared lately — Hostinger vs. Bluehost: Which one is better for your business?
“Coming Soon!”
The placeholder page allows people to see that the site will be live soon. Sometimes, however you can make your site live and it will still read “Coming Soon” which is obviously a problem. If this occurs, either your browser is loading an old version of the site and so you only need to clear your cache to fix this, or you uploaded the site to the wrong area of the hosting site. Double check where you uploaded and it and see where it actually needs to go and you’ll be fine.
Changes Not Being Shown
Luckily, this is a very easy fix. If you make changes to your site but it doesn’t actually make any difference on the live site, it’s a simple case of needing to clear your cache again and then the changes should display.
Website is Down
If your website does go down, then it might be because of a change you’ve made. If you haven’t made any changes then the most common cause is your hosting company is experiencing down time. Most hosting companies nowadays will guarantee 99.99% uptime, however there is still that 00.01% likelihood of it going down. Give them a quick ring and they’ll be able to tell you when you’re going to be back up. If they aren’t down, then there is something else broken and you will need to get them to fix it for you.
No Images
Images are vitally important to the aesthetics of your site and so if they aren’t displaying you need to fix it, otherwise your site will look barren and unprofessional. First, try uploading the images again and it should fix it, otherwise, open the picture in a new tab and read the URL that’s being used. Upload the files into that URL and there you go.
What a Mess!
If you upload your site and it looks like a Jackson Pollack painting, then you’ve probably got a missing CSS file or two. To make your site look somewhat legible again, re-upload the entire site and if that doesn’t work you’ll have to go on a massive treasure hunt for the missing CSS file … good luck with that.
If you encounter one of these problems and you try my suggestions and they don’t work, then the only people who can help you are the experts. I told you’d need them. They should be able to fix any issues within a few moments and you can go back to running your business.
