My Website Is Down: How to Check Why

Step 1: Is it down for everyone, or just you?

Open your site on your phone with WiFi turned off, using mobile data instead. If it loads fine there, the problem is local: your router, your ISP, or a DNS cache on your computer, not your website. If it is also down on mobile data, move to step 2.

Step 2: Check if the domain itself is the problem

• Domain expired. Sounds obvious, but it is one of the most common causes of a site suddenly going fully dark, especially if auto-renew failed silently on an old card.
• SSL certificate expired. This usually shows a security warning rather than a blank page, but some browsers block the page entirely.
• DNS misconfigured or DNS still propagating after a recent change to nameservers or DNS records.

Step 3: Check if it is hosting-side

• Log into your hosting control panel directly (not through the site). If you cannot reach the control panel either, it is very likely a hosting outage, check their status page.
• Check if you are over a resource limit (CPU, bandwidth, storage) that shared hosting plans quietly enforce by suspending the account.
• Check for an unpaid hosting invoice. Hosts suspend accounts for this before they email a final warning.

Step 4: If the domain and hosting both check out

At this point it is almost always something inside the site itself: a fatal PHP error, a database connection issue, or a misconfigured redirect. See the specific error message your browser shows, if there is one, it usually points straight at the cause:

• "There has been a critical error on this website"
• "Error establishing a database connection"
• A 403, 404, 502 or 503 error page
• An SSL or "too many redirects" error

If nothing on the page tells you anything

A completely blank white screen with no error text at all is usually a PHP fatal error with error display turned off, which is actually the right production setting, it just means you cannot self-diagnose from the browser. That is where checking your host's error log, or having someone check it for you, becomes necessary.