Don’t you just hate it when your blog or site is down?

So it is better you educate yourself a little bit about common issues with web hosting providers.

This may help you to avoid those problems before they occur.

 

Here are a few most common issues with shared hosting companies and ways to solve them
I can't see my website!
There could be several reasons why you can't access your website.

Now:

First, check your the internet connection. Can you reach other websites on the internet? If your internet connection is working, check whether you can reach other websites on the same server.

IP-address temporarily blocked?
If internet connection is fine , check whether you are able to connect to the website from another computer. If you can, most likely you have triggered the Firewall rules.

This means your IP-address it gets temporarily blocked. Contact the support to remove this block.

Code Changes? Still you can not see your site, think whether you did something wrong. Any code changes, any changes to settings etc. Rollback your changes and see if your site came back.

Backup and restore: If you forgot the code changes you made, you can restore your site from back up. Please contact your host to recover from most recent backup taken.

This only underlines the importance of a daily backup. Make sure your website backups are taken daily by your host. Good hosts automate backup process so that daily backups are performed.

Domain expired?  May be your domain name registration has expired or the hosting of your site has expired?

Or did you miss a payment? Usually good hosting companies like BlueHost are very prompt in billing and they let you know when you missed a payment. If this is the case, then you would need to contact them to renew it.

Server Maintenance? There may be a problem with your server. Check if there is any maintenance scheduled. If you still cannot find out what the problem is, please contact your website hosting support.



My Website is slow
[caption id="attachment_7485" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Slow websites have poor conversion rate[/caption]

A slow website leads to poor conversion..

As if that’s not enough , it can result in bad search ranking.

According to a survey, customers expect a website to load in 2 seconds, max.75% of people won’t return to a website that takes longer than 4 seconds to load.

Here’s the deal:

The first step is to figure out when the server is slowing down.

Once you've figured out when to monitor the server, look at if there any problems on the CPU, memory, or disk. Check how much physical memory do you have, and how much is being used?

The first and most common cause of show website response is server overload. This occurs when too many requests for pages or programs occur at the same time.

Check your scripts, plugin, graphic files sizes, and database connections.

Smart thing to do:

Perform a repair and optimize on your database tables. If you have a wordpress blog,you are lucky. WP-Optimize can automatically cleanup your wordpress db for best performance.

Look at your server logs and find out whether there any errors.

Leading web hosting providers are using various technologies to boost their hosting speed. Read What is SSD Web Hosting (High Speed Hosting) and why you need one?



Missing e-mails, difficulties to log in to your mailbox, email not working at all
This may indicate, that your mail server is down or not configured properly.

Make sure that your hosting provider has not upgraded your e-mail servers.

Check out your account and the configuration of your account in your email client . Make sure our entire account and/or email account total disk space is not exceeding permitted  disk quotas.

If you are using  shared hosting, check whether your Email Server’s IP is Blacklisted. Contact your website hosting company for more details.



Lack of Security
As more and more people and businesses are utilizing internet in more ways security is of utmost important. Lack of security can result in loss of customer trust and search engine ranking.

Here’s the deal:

There are 2 types of people out there to harm to your site:

Identity thieves
Hackers

These guys are  simply looking to cause disruption. Your web host is aware of these security issues and is taking care of their servers to provide a secure environment.

E.g. DDoS Protection to help prevent possible attacks, RAID System to make sure your data is safe and secure from hard drive failures, a firewall setup to ensure that all non essential ports are blocked.

Now:

You need to some basic things to ensure your web site is as secure as possible.

Update all scripts/applications to the newest versions available.
If you installed these applications using your host's script installer, automatic updates are available by clicking the 'Upgrade' button. Also you may be using many plugins for popular application like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.
Update all those plugins to the newest versions available. If you are using a managed hosting solution, then you don't need to worry so much about applying security updates for the operating system as the hosting company should take care of this.
Never leave scripts on your account that is not being used. Delete any applications/ databases from your account that are no longer in use.
Watch for files or directories that you are not familiar with.
Do not give unnecessary write permissions to any files/folders.
If you are uploading files from the Internet, only use secure transport methods to your server such as SFTP or SSH.
Making regular backups of your website is very important.
Make sure your personal computer does not have viruses, trojans, keyloggers, etc.


Take Action: Get Sucuri , a comprehensive website security system. If you are serious about website security, then Sucuri would give you peace of mind. It can clean infected sites as well as protect your site from future attacks. They even have a wordpress plugin, in case you have a wordpress blog.

Recommended reading: How to Choose the Most Secure Web Host



Your Site access is blocked in some countries
Your domain is appearing in blacklists, your site and emails are being blocked and lost.

Aargh!

This is a problem with shared hosting. In  shared hosting, same IP address is shared by more than one website. This means that you may be sharing IP with some ‘bad neighbors’.

Some countries, like China, block particular web sites by their IP address. A shared server might have 200 websites sharing the same ip. Then entire group of customers with that IP are also blocked.

Solution:

Here's a smart thing to do.  Purchase a dedicated IP address from your web host.  It is as simple as that.

 

Summary and Take Away Action Items
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Make sure your website backups are taken daily. Do not risk this.
Make sure your domain registration is set to auto renew and payments are setup correct.
Make sure your web hosting payments are prompt.
Once a month, make it a habit to:

Remove unused scripts
Update plugins and scripts relevant to your website
Optimize your database


Make sure your webhost offers solid support and timely answers and solutions. Ensure your host has good knowledegebase.
Keep track of your disk quotas
Secure your site. Get Sucuri
Get a dedicated IP from your host

Many of these issues can be avoided if you stick to a reliable and quality host like BlueHost. It is not a bad idea to switch to BlueHost, since they have solid support and offers a safe and secure shared hosting environment and is best in business.

Switch to BlueHost Today for just $3.95 a month and get a free domain

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