How to Fix 3 Common Hosting Problems

When you buy hosting, you normally get support as part of the deal (unless you’ve bought an unmanaged hosting plan).

But sometimes, there’s no need to rely on support.

Here are three things that could happen often – and might be easy to fix.

1. Site is Down

First, be honest: did you do something? Tinkering with a site or its settings can cause problems, even if they don’t appear immediately.

Try connecting via FTP. Does your connection work? If so, you probably did something to the site to bring it down.

Look up error messages and try to roll back any changes that you made and see which, if any, caused the problem.

If you can’t rollback your changes easily, you may need to open a ticket.

2. Site is Slow

Sometimes slow response times are caused by other sites on the same server.

Often, it’s something to do with your configuration.

Try the following:

• Perform a repair and optimize on your database tables. You can do this in phpMyAdmin. Don’t delete anything.
• Add caching, such as W3 Total Cache for WordPress users.
• Disable plugins on your CMS, or delete them entirely.
• Look at your server logs, which can be found in your CPanel or Plesk control panel. Are there any errors?
• Check your server’s resources in WHM. You may find that a script is not functioning properly and needs to be stopped.

Still stuck? Call the helpline.

3. Script Errors

Sometimes sites will work but will show errors at the top or bottom of a page.

These are usually PHP errors, are almost always very specific: they’ll tell you where the problem is, so Google for the solution.

If you do that, you can address about 99% of these errors. For the remaining 1%, you probably will want to contact support for help.

DIY Hosting Support

Google can help you fix many common problems, and it’s usually far quicker to DIY than it is to contact a technical support team.

Keeping backups is the key to having a failsafe solution to any problem.