Web Hosting Common Issues

What is Website Hosting?

Website hosting is a service that stores and protects your website’s files on a server and makes them accessible on the internet. Your website can’t be viewed without website hosting.

Your website host will manage the technical server side of things, including:

• Uptime: the amount of time your website is available and functioning online without outages, errors, or other service interruptions referred to as “downtime.” Look for a hosting provider that offers a high percentage of uptime.
• Infrastructure Stability: the reliability of a hosting provider’s hardware, networks, and servers. These are the tools used to keep your website running smoothly with very little (if any) downtime.
• Server-Level Security: the security measures the hosting provider puts in place to protect websites from hackers, malware, and other forms of unauthorized access. Common forms of server security are firewalls, security patches and updates, and frequent malware scans.

Finding a dependable hosting service to handle the server side of things means you can focus on growing your website’s content safely and confidently. To learn more about website hosting at Northwest, check out our Complete Guide to Web Hosting.

Five Common Hosting Problems & Solutions

Websites can occasionally experience technical difficulties. Gaining an understanding of the most common website problems can help you identify the cause and quickly find the solution.

1. Site Not Loading (Website Downtime)

Have you ever clicked on a website only to get “this site can’t be reached?” This is referred to as “website downtime” and it has a few possible causes:

• Expired Domain Name: You may have missed the renewal date for the domain registration.
  Solution: log in to your domain registry to renew your domain registration, and perhaps enable the “auto-renew” feature so your domain never expires again.
• Expired Hosting Plan: The website hosting subscription was not renewed, which means the hosting provider usually suspends access to the website until the subscription is renewed
  Solution: log in to your hosting service dashboard and make sure your subscription is current.
• DNS Misconfiguration: The DNS settings of your website contain an error, like a typo in your site’s IP address or host name. Errors like this block the website’s path to the server storing its files and prevents the site from loading for visitors.
  Solution: log in to your domain registry and verify your DNS settings are correct. Contact your domain registrar for assistance.
• Server Outage: The hosting server may be temporarily offline due to technical issues or for routine maintenance.
  Solution: check your email to see if your website host announced a routine maintenance outage. Contact your website hosting service and let them know about your website’s outage.
• Corrupted Files: This happens when your website’s files become damaged or altered due to malware or hacker breaches within the server.
  Solution: contact your website hosting service and ask them to check your websites files in their server.

2. Website is Slow to Load

If it seems to take forever for your website to load for you, chances are potential clients visiting your page are experiencing the same thing. This could cost you money from lost business opportunities and a low ranking in search results online. Common causes of slow website load time are:

• Large Image Files: large image files cause the browser to download more data each time someone visits your website.
  Solution: find a free image compressor online to reduce the size of your website’s images. This will reduce the browser’s data download time, making your website appear much faster.
• Too Many Plugins: a plugin is a small type of software program you can easily pop onto your website, like a contact form or a spam blocker. While convenient, too many plugins can slow down your website’s load speed.
  Solution: consider reducing the number of plugins you’ve added to your website.
• Caching is Not Enabled: caching saves a load-ready version of your website in your browser. So, the next time you visit your site, the browser knows exactly what to load.
  Solution: log in to your hosting service dashboard, find the section called “Performance,” and turn on the caching feature.
• Hosting Service Resource Limits: your hosting service may have your website on a shared server, which means many other website’s files are stored along with your own. During high traffic hours, when many people are accessing the internet, website load times can suffer.
  Solution: contact your hosting service provider and consider upgrading your subscription to a higher tier. Upgrading your service means the provider will dedicate more bandwidth, processing power, and memory to your website so it can handle more visitors at the same time without slowing down.
• Outdated Software: check to see if your computer or the browser you use needs a software update.
  Solution: access your computer’s Control Panel and see if you’re missing any software upgrades for your operating system, browser, video cards, or for your router or modem.

3. SSL Security Errors (“Not Secure” Warning)

SSL security encrypts data between your website and its visitors. So, if you visit your website and the URL bar says “not secure” in red letters, this indicates a problem with your SSL security coding. Common causes of SSL errors are:

• Expired SSL Security: just like your domain registration and website hosting subscription, SSL security needs to be renewed regularly.
  Solution: log in to your hosting service dashboard and renew the SSL security feature.
• Improper SSL Installation: this happens when SSL security is not correctly configured on your server.
  Solution: log in to your hosting service dashboard and reinstall SSL security to make sure it’s properly configured.
• Mixed HTTP and HTTPS Content: this happens when parts of your website load securely, while others do not. For example, if you make a link to another site or page in your website content, and that link is not secure, this can compromise the security of your entire website.
  Solution: review all the links you’ve made throughout your website, and update the unsecured links to secure sites and pages, and your whole website will be considered secure.

4. Database Connection Errors

If you see “Error Establishing a Database Connection,” this means your website can’t connect to the collection of content files (your site’s database) stored on the website hosting server. Database connection errors are usually caused by:

• Incorrect Database Credentials: this happens when the database name, username, password, or host listed for your website’s configuration file do not match the login details stored on your hosting service control panel.
  Solution: check that the database name, username, password, and host listed in your website’s configuration file match the database details inside your hosting service control panel.
• Corrupted Database: your database can become corrupted when updates fail, plugins cause conflicts, or files are damaged. This prevents the website from retrieving the information needed to load your site.
  Solution: use the database repair tool found within your hosting service dashboard. This tool will automatically scan for and fix minor corruption issues.
• Server Overload: when too many visitors are using the server at the same time, it can temporarily run out of resources (memory, bandwidth) and be unable to support any more database requests.
  Solution: contact your hosting provider if you suspect server overload. They will investigate the server’s performance level and find solutions. One such solution might be to upgrade your hosting plan so access to your website’s database is allotted more resources during high-traffic times.

5. 404 Errors (Page Not Found)

404 errors occur when someone tries to visit a page that no longer exists at that address. These errors make it harder for search engines to find your website and display it in someone’s search results. Here are the most common causes of 404 errors and how to fix them:

• Deleted Content: when you remove a page from your website, but links to that page still exist elsewhere, those links will produce the 404 error.
  Solution: after deleting a page, set up a “301 redirect” for the deleted URL. A 301 redirect will take visitors and search engines to an active link of your choice, instead of to a dead page and a 404 error.
• Changed URLs: you may need to update or change the URL of a page on your website as your business grows and your website expands.
  Solution: when you change a URL, make sure you review the other pages of your website and update the links that lead to that page. Or, you can also use a 301 redirect the same as you would for a deleted page.
• Broken Internal Links: these happen when links inside your website take visitors to pages that were deleted, received a URL update with no redirect, or typed incorrectly.
  Solution: you can create a custom 404 error page for your website that gives visitors helpful information, like links to your homepage, instead of leaving your website altogether.

Website Hosting Maintenance Tips

So, you’ve created a beautiful, informative website for your business. Now, you need to keep it that way with some regular maintenance and tune ups. A well maintained website is less likely to experience problems like downtime, slow performance, and security issues.

By following these five quick and easy maintenance practices, you can keep your business website running smoothly and reliably.

1. Keep Your Software Updated

Outdated software is one of the most common causes of website security breaches, and one of the easiest ones to prevent by simply keeping your computer, browser, and content management system (CMS) software updated.

2. Enable Automatic Backups

Backups will protect your website from hackers, database crashes, and accidental deletion. By activating “automatic backups” in your hosting service dashboard, or storing your backups off-site on a separate storage device, you’ll be able to quickly recover your data and content.

Regular backups will ensure you can restore your website to a recent working version if something goes wrong.

3. Strengthen Website Security

By using strong passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication, and limiting login attempts, you can effectively safeguard your website from hackers, malware, and domain hijacking. Make sure the web hosting service you choose offers a variety of security measures you can enable to protect your website data.

4. Monitor Uptime

Keeping track of your website’s uptime will help you spot security or accessibility issues quickly. Choose a hosting service that guarantees a high uptime percentage for their client’s websites, this means they are committed to reliability.

Make sure to enable instant notifications if your website ever goes down in your hosting service dashboard, or look for free uptime monitoring tools you can download to your computer or phone.

5. Enable Auto-Renew for Domain Registration & Hosting

The easiest way to prevent downtime for your website is to make sure your domain registration and hosting subscription stay current and active. Save yourself from the worry of trying to remember those renewal dates, and just enable auto-renew.

Also make sure you have an active payment card on file with your registrar and hosting service so the auto-renew is successful.

Northwest can help you with all your web hosting issues, sign up today!