We are thrilled to have caught up with Emma Clure, Senior Digital Marketer at Pixel Kicks one of Manchester’s leading web design agencies.
A website crash is something you want to avoid at all costs. If a visitor can’t access your website, you risk losing out on their custom and there’s a good chance they might not return.
There are some simple reasons why your website might crash, and we highly recommend staying on top of all of these to ensure it doesn’t happen to you.
Hosting
One of the first things to look at when your website is crashing is your hosting set-up. Sometimes, it can be a very simple oversight – maybe your hosting plan has expired without you realising, or your hosting company’s servers are temporarily down.
It’s not always the case though, and can sometimes be down to other hosting issues. Maybe your hosting plan has limited your site in terms of size and traffic, and you’ve unexpectedly exceeded this.
If your site runs into problems that seem to be down to your hosting, it’s best to contact your service provider ASAP, either for details on the downtime, or to update your plan if that’s the cause.
Plugins
Plugins are a great way to enhance your website, offering different options for content, additional features and functions.
However, plugins are third-party companies which means you don’t know how they’ve been built, and if they’re poorly built they may cause some issues in the backend of your website, which can be a risk factor for crashing.
Good quality plugins should have regular updates, and if your plugins haven’t been updated in a while, this could be a cause for concern too.
Traffic
One of the main measures of website performance is the number of visitors it gets, but there could come a time when too much traffic causes an issue.
We’ve all been there before, desperately trying to snatch some concert tickets the second they are released on sale – but so are thousands of other people. The website isn’t built to serve that many, so it crashes and most are left disappointed.
This problem can arise on any website, big or small. If, for example, you’ve pushed out a great piece of content that goes viral and your website can’t handle such an influx of traffic, you can expect it to crash.
The best way to ensure that this doesn’t happen to your website is to check that your hosting is powerful enough to handle such traffic.
Code Errors
The code of a website is essential to its proper functioning, but it’s also very prone to human error.
Even the simplest of mistakes in a line of code can take down a whole page or cause the entire website to crash. Scanning the code for errors can take some time, meanwhile your traffic has seen a huge hit.
The simplest way around this is to ensure that the only people who have access to your site’s code know what they’re doing. It’s no place for the untrained eye, as the most minor errors can cost your website and ultimately, your business.
Hackers
We’ve all seen stereotypical hackers in fictional movies, but they’re a very real threat, and your website could be attacked at any time.
Whilst hacking commonly refers to gaining access to a password protected account, online attackers can put your website out of action without anything of the sort. If your site isn’t working, it could be down to a Distributed Denial of Service attack, otherwise known as a DDoS.
This is when attackers send an automated surge of web traffic to your site from various sources, with the huge demand often being a strain on your hosting, and putting your site out of action.
Expired Domain
When commissioning your website for the first time, you’ll have chosen a domain name, this being the URL people use to find you. All domain names have a lifespan, meaning you have to pay a recurring fee to keep it under your ownership, else it goes back up for sale to anyone else who might want to use it for their own purposes.
Your domain name might have been purchased and registered by the company who built your website, or it’s something you might have done yourself. Either way, you should get reminders from your domain registrar company when close to expiry, and can often set up an auto-renewal so you don’t run into the problem.
If you would like any more information on Pixel Kicks, their services or work you can contact them directly here.
