My website is broken, what do I do?

There are not many things worse than getting a call from a customer, who can not access their website. Except maybe calling up your hosting provider, and abusing the poor sod on the other end of the phone because you can't access your site, only to be told its because your computer is not connected to the internet. To avoid this embarrassment, read on.

Troubleshooting a problem with your website is not a linear process, so the following tips do not necessarily need to be followed in order.

• Verify you are on the internet, try going to a random google search, or even just google from a different country, ie Google Argentinia, Google Germany. As Google is very rarely down, if you can reach google, its safe to assume you are on the internet, if you can't might be time to reboot and reconnect.
• Try going to the website of your hosting company, ie Anchor. If you can get to them, but not your site, it might be a problem with your hosting company, give them a call.
• Check your domain is still valid, do a whois search on your domain, Is your domain status OK, or is it PendingDelete? If its pending delete it might be time to renew your domain
• Check if other people are having problems, preferably ones who connect through a different ISP. If you don't know who to ask, try doing a traceroute to your website from a online service, a list is available at traceroute.org. When you do a traceroute to your domain, it will say "Traceroute to www.yourdomain.com.au (IPADDRESS)", the IP address is a number like 203.98.94.10. If the last step at the bottom of the page is the same number, even if it is a different name, other people can reach the server, it might be your ISP.
• Try using a service like anonymizer or Sam Spade to browse to your website, see if it comes up for them.
• If your email is through the same company, try checking your email. If you can receive email, but not see the website, it is possible your ISP has a proxy that is playing up.

Summary

Related Links:

• http://www.anchor.com.au/shipyard/articles/hosting/how_dns_works.py

Resource Links:

• http://samspade.org/
• http://www.traceroute.org/
• http://looking-glass.optus.net.au/
• http://mrtg.zipworld.net/zip-lg.html
• http://mrtg.waia.asn.au/test.php3