My website isn't working. Where do I start?

Work through these checks in order. Most problems are found in the first four.

1. Is it just you?

• Open your website in a private or incognito window, and on your phone using mobile data (not Wi-Fi).
• If it works there, the problem is your browser cache or network. See Clearing your cache.
• If it works on mobile data but not on your usual network, your IP address may be blocked. See My IP address is blocked.
• If it doesn’t work anywhere, carry on.

2. What does the page say?

The error message tells you where to look:

What you see	Go to
“This site can’t be reached”, “DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN” or “Server not found”	Step 3: domain and DNS
“Your connection is not private” or another SSL warning	Fixing “Your connection is not private” errors
403 Forbidden	Fixing 403 Forbidden errors
404 Not Found	Fixing 404 Not Found errors
500 Internal Server Error	Fixing 500 Internal Server Errors
503 or 508 Resource Limit Is Reached	Fixing 503 and 508 errors
429 Too Many Requests	Fixing 429 Too Many Requests errors
“There has been a critical error on this website”	Fixing the WordPress critical error
“Error establishing a database connection”	Fixing “Error establishing a database connection”
A blank white page	Troubleshooting blank pages in WordPress
“Index of /” and a list of files	“Index of /” shows instead of my website
“Account suspended”	Hosting account suspended
A “too many redirects” error	Fixing “too many redirects”
The page loads but is very slow	Why is my website slow?

3. Check your domain

• Has your domain expired? Log in to the client area and check Domains. See Renewing an expired domain.
• Is it pointing to Ruachost? Your domain must use our nameservers, or have an A record pointing to your hosting server. See Checking a domain’s WHOIS and nameservers.
• Did you change DNS or nameservers recently? Changes can take up to 24–48 hours to reach everyone. See DNS propagation explained.
• Is the domain suspended by the registry? See Domain suspended: ServerHold and ClientHold.

4. Check your hosting account

• In the client area, open Services and check your hosting is Active. An unpaid invoice can suspend it.
• In cPanel, check Disk Usage: a full disk stops websites and email working properly.
• In cPanel, open Resource Usage to see if your account has hit its CPU, memory or process limits.

5. Check what changed

Most errors start right after a change. Think about what happened just before:

• a plugin, theme or software update
• a new PHP version in Select PHP Version
• an edit to .htaccess, wp-config.php or another file
• files moved, renamed or uploaded

Undo the change, or restore from your automatic backups. See Restoring files, email and databases using JetBackup.

6. Read the error logs

• PHP errors are saved in an error_log file in your website’s folder. See Finding PHP error logs.
• cPanel’s Errors page (under Metrics) shows the latest web server errors.

Still stuck?

Open a support ticket and include:

• your website address
• the exact error message, or a screenshot
• when it started and anything you changed just before