What if Your Web Host Has Nothing to Do with Your Website Downtime?

So you’ve done your research, put a new host through the paces during a free trial and moved your site over to the new hosting company. Now that your site is there, you’re experiencing the same downtime issues all over again. What’s to blame? Did your host suddenly take a turn for the worst? If this is the scenario, chances are that your downtime has little to do with your web host and everything to do with bugs in your site’s programming. Here are some tips to help you get back on track.

Understanding How Your Site’s Programming Can Affect Your Uptime

Sometimes website downtime has nothing to do with hosting companies and everything to do with the way a site is programmed and coded. There are a number of issues that can contribute to unacceptable levels of downtime including:

-Viruses

-Corrupted Files

-Programming Bugs and Errors

-Accidental File Deletion

-Malicious Hacking

Even if your site is experiencing just one of the above issues, it can result in website downtime that results in lost profits and a damaged reputation.

How to Fix the Problem

First things first, you want to have website monitoring in place to alert you when your site is down. After all, unless you are alerted that you are having an unusually high level of downtime you won’t really be able to pinpoint how much downtime you are experiencing.

Once you have website monitoring in place, it’s time to utilize webmaster tools that will run through the programming and coding of your site, letting you know if there are any bugs or errors or corrupted files. If files seem to be missing, make sure you are keeping backup copies of those files so you can get them live as quickly as possible. In addition, you may want to implement firewalls and other security software that can prevent hackers from wreaking havoc on your site.

Between consistent downtime notifications, putting security tools in place and running them at all times, creating backup copies of your website files so you can implement them at a moment’s notice, and utilizing tools that alert you when there are issues with your files, coding or programming, you should be able to minimize the amount of downtime that your site experiences as well as the losses that come along with that dreaded downtime.