Website not reachable - Causes and Measures

Anyone who runs their own website for an extended period will sooner or later be faced with downtime. But there are measures to secure your website as much as possible against the causes of outages. All information on this topic can be found in the following article.

It's every webmaster's worst nightmare: you type in your domain name in the browser, but instead of your website, you see an error message on the screen. Numerous questions then race through your mind. How long has the website been unreachable? What went wrong? And of course, the most important question: How can the problem be resolved as quickly as possible? At some point in their life, every webmaster is usually faced with this problem. Additionally, there are numerous different reasons why your website may not be accessible.

An outage of web hosting is not only annoying but can also be quite costly. A brief downtime of the Amazon website in 2013 cost the company $66,000 per minute. While your own website may not be comparable to Amazon, a downtime can still be damaging to your business. The IT company Evolven from the USA estimates the average costs of a large company's website outage due to lost revenue and reduced employee productivity to be over $5,000 per minute. This forecast only includes measurable costs. More significant is often the damage to reputation caused by a website outage. Imagine a potential customer trying to visit your company's website for the first time and only seeing an error message. The likelihood that they will never visit the website again and opt for a competitor's offer is very high. On the internet, the website gives potential customers a first impression of your company. This impression must always be perfect because, as is well known, there is no second chance for a first impression.

Even large and well-known companies are not immune to outages, as the following examples show:

• January 2014
• Google Drive, Google Plus, Gmail
  Users were unable to access the services for almost an hour due to a software glitch.
  Source: http://www.focus.de/digital/gmail-und-drive-betroffen-diverse-google-dienste-sind-nicht-zu-erreichen_id_4219355.html
• June 2014
• Microsoft Exchange Online
  Users were unable to log into their mail accounts for several hours.
  Source: https://winfuture.de/news,82324.html
• March 2014
• Twitter
  Actress Ellen DeGeneres tweeted a selfie from the Oscars, which was retweeted over 3 million times in just one hour. The resulting traffic temporarily brought down the entire service.
  Source: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/rekord-selfie-oscar-toppt-obama-1.1902664
• January 2015
• Facebook
  The popular social media services Facebook and Instagram were down for 45 minutes.
  Source: http://www.heute.de/facebook-und-instagram-fuer-45-minuten-ausgefallen-36904214.html
• February 2015
• Amazon
  The amazon.de website and associated services like Instant Video were temporarily unavailable.
  Source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Teilausfaelle-bei-Amazon-sorgten-fuer-Kundenfrust-2550150.html

How to Recognise an Outage?

Various criteria can help identify a web hosting outage and the limited accessibility of your own website.

Website Functionality and Display Issues

A website is not displayed correctly or certain parts are not functioning. For example, customers may be unable to log in or use functions like the shopping cart. Design errors may also occur, or individual elements may not be displayed. This typically indicates issues with the program code or certain scripts.

Browser Unable to Find the Page

When trying to access the domain in the browser, a connection to the website cannot be established. A "Server not found" message appears in the browser. This usually indicates a problem with the domain or the nameserver.

Timeout

After entering the domain name in the browser, it attempts to establish a connection. It appears as if the page is loading, but even after a long time, there is no display of the page. This can have various causes.

Browser displays a specific error message

When trying to access the website, the browser displays an error message in the form of a three-digit number. This is the so-called HTTP status code, which can indicate the cause. Some of the most well-known codes that everyone has seen before are as follows:

• 401 Unauthorized
• Authentication is required to access the content.
• 403 Forbidden
• Insufficient permissions to access the content.
• 404 Not Found
• The requested content was not found.
• 500 Internal Server Error
• An unexpected server error has occurred.
• 502 Bad Gateway
• The server failed to forward the request.
• 503 Service Unavailable
• The server is temporarily unavailable.

What are the causes of an outage?

The outage of a web hosting service and the limited accessibility of your own website can have various causes.

Planned Server Maintenance

Planned server maintenance is a common occurrence in data centres. Upgrades to hardware or software occasionally require a server to be taken offline. Maintenance is usually carried out during low visitor traffic times at night to minimise the negative impact of limited accessibility for the website owner.

Webmaster Errors

Often, the outage is also caused by the webmaster themselves. Reasons for this can include programming errors or script errors on the website, leading to limited accessibility of the web presence. Additionally, organisational issues can also be a factor. For instance, webmasters may forget to renew hosting in time or fail to make payments correctly. In both cases, the web space is suspended by the provider.

DDoS Attacks

During DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, there is a deliberately induced overload of the host's infrastructure systems. Excessive traffic is sent to the server with the aim of overwhelming it and taking the affected websites offline. Such attacks can target a specific competitor or simply disrupt operations by hacker groups.

Server Overload

Unlike DDoS attacks, server overload due to high traffic can occur without malicious intent. For example, when websites attract a lot of attention through promotional activities. Shared web hosting packages with limited resources are more susceptible to this type of overload compared to the more powerful Dedicated Servers.

Data Centre Issues

Even though data centres are usually well protected against potential issues, unexpected events can still occur. Errors can arise in hardware, software, or infrastructure.

• Network Errors
• Issues with the connection to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) or in the DNS configuration.
• Hardware Failures
• Failure of individual hardware components in the server or infrastructure such as power supply.
• System Errors
• Incorrectly configured server settings or errors in the operating system, databases, and scripting languages.

What Consequences Can an Outage Have?

The outage of a web hosting service and the limited accessibility of your website can have various consequences.

• No Sales
• No sales can be processed through the provider's website.
• No Leads
• Potential visitors cannot get in touch with the provider through the website.
• Decline in Advertising Revenue
• As no ads can be displayed on the website, advertising revenue decreases.
• Wasted Advertising Budget
• Booked advertising such as Google or Facebook ads cannot drive traffic to the website.
• Customer Disappointment
• Customers are unable to use the services and may switch to competitors.
• Damage to Image
• An outage reflects poorly on the company.
• SEO Impact
• Frequent outages lead to lower search engine rankings and a drop in visibility.
• Operational Issues
• Day-to-day operations of the company are disrupted.

How to Protect Against Outages

There are various measures to minimise the risk of downtime.

Don't Skimp on Hosting

First and foremost, always choose a good and reliable hosting provider and opt for a package with sufficient performance and necessary features. Cloud hosting may also be worth considering, as it automatically provides adequate resources to handle peak traffic. Additionally, pay attention to SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that guarantee uptime and response times from the host.

Use CDN Services

By utilising a CDN (Content Distribution Network) service, your website is delivered from cached versions on various servers located in different places. Providers like Cloudflare or MaxCDN offer this service. It's a simple and effective way to prevent short-term outages.

Backup Hosting and DNS Management

The safest option is to set up a second hosting account with a completely different provider on a server located geographically far away from the primary server. By regularly backing up the data from the primary server to the secondary server, the entire website is mirrored. In case of a failure, the second server can take over all tasks. Properly configured DNS management ensures that requests are immediately redirected to the secondary server if the primary server fails. Some hosting providers offer these services under the name Mirrored Server.

Website Monitoring

Additionally, one's online presence should be constantly monitored using Website Monitoring Tools to be able to react quickly in case of a failure. Most services notify the webmaster immediately via SMS or email in case of an outage. Monitoring specific criteria, such as loading times or the functionality of individual applications on the website, can also be ensured.

What to do in case of an outage?

If there is indeed an outage and your website is not accessible, remain calm and follow these steps:

1. Confirm the outage

Firstly, ensure that the website is actually offline and the issue lies with the hosting provider. Often, the problem can also be caused locally by the browser or the ISP. To do this, check if, for example, the browser is working offline and clear the browser cache. Then, test different internet connections (fixed line and mobile) and also check possible connections to other well-known websites. Once it is confirmed that the website is indeed offline, proceed to step 2.

2. Contact the hosting provider

Now, contact the hosting provider to find out if the problem is already known. Initially, you can check the website, blog, network status page, or the company's social media accounts for information. Almost all hosting providers publish current status updates about their services there. If in doubt, picking up the phone to contact the provider directly to find out how long it will approximately take to resolve the issue.

Tip: Find out what you can do if your hoster is no longer reachable.

3. Communication with your own customers

Depending on the nature of your online business, your customers should be informed about the outage. Communication can take place via email or social media channels, depending on availability. It is essential to respond promptly to any inquiries and inform customers that the issue is being addressed. The primary goal here is to reassure your customers and apologise for the outage.

An outage of your website is often an unexpected or unfortunate incident that cannot be completely avoided. Adequate preparation, however, helps to react quickly in case of emergency and reassure your customers.