{"id":1648,"date":"2011-06-06T16:23:09","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T20:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/?p=1648"},"modified":"2011-11-29T21:09:35","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T02:09:35","slug":"surviving-website-downtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/surviving-website-downtime\/","title":{"rendered":"Surviving Website Downtime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Downtime is an annoying occurrence that most website owners experience sooner or later when managing web hosting needs.\u00a0 Downtime is basically considered as the amount of time that a website is inaccessible to users for various reasons.\u00a0 While some websites have near perfect uptime rates, others are offline at least a couple of hours each day.\u00a0 Understanding downtime and how to prevent it from wrecking havoc on the daily operations of web hosting is essential for success.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Downtime Causes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Although often difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of downtime, there are several common reasons.\u00a0 The first being planned downtime by the web host for tasks such as server upgrades, hardware, operating systems or software.\u00a0 Another cause is component failures such as faulty hardware, defective programs, viruses, file corruption, and programming errors.\u00a0 User errors or malicious intent are other causes which include accidentally erasing files or hackers.\u00a0 Finally, natural disasters which can\u2019t be prevented such as hurricanes and tornadoes are also common causes of server downtime.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Affects of Downtime<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Regardless of the cause for sever downtime, the impacts are usually significant.\u00a0 The most obvious impact of downtime is a loss of profits.\u00a0 A staggering example is Amazon.com\u2019s approximate two hour downtime in June 2007 that resulted in an estimated $3.48 million profit loss.\u00a0 Customer satisfaction also takes a hard hit whenever a website experiences downtime.\u00a0 Along the same lines, a loss of interest from potential investors is often a result of website downtime.\u00a0 Search engine rankings are also affected negatively by downtime as it\u2019s factored into the top five things considered when rankings are generated.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Proactive Steps to Prevent Downtime<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While downtime can\u2019t always be predicted, especially in cases of planned downtime or natural disaster, there are proactive ways to prevent website downtime.\u00a0 Consider the following steps:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use a DNS backup service<\/li>\n<li>Purchase a monitoring system to ping websites on a regular schedule and send notifications of outages.<\/li>\n<li>Backup data on regular intervals<\/li>\n<li>Maintain current domain name<\/li>\n<li>Utilize Google Webmaster tools<\/li>\n<li>Implement accurate server downtime error codes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Reporting Downtime<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> Remember that time is a valuable commodity, especially when it comes to generating profits via an e-commerce site.\u00a0 Once your site has been verified as down and the respective website is offline, try to locate the cause of the outage.\u00a0 Often scripts running cause a strain on the server, thus resulting in being knocked offline.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t locate the reason for the outage, contact your web host\u2019s technical support.\u00a0 Hosting providers aren\u2019t always aware of outages, so it\u2019s important to notify them as soon as possible to report the outage.\u00a0 After reporting the issue, it\u2019s equally as important to send notifications to your customers to let them know you\u2019re aware of the website being offline and explain the situation to the best of your knowledge. Finally, stay in touch with the web host\u2019s customer support and IT team that\u2019s been assigned and responsible for fixing the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Downtime is an annoying occurrence that most website owners experience sooner or later when managing web hosting needs.\u00a0 Downtime is basically considered as the amount of time that a website&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2615,2614,3926,247,591],"class_list":["post-1648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-stuff","tag-defective-programs","tag-faulty-hardware","tag-files","tag-uptime","tag-virus"],"views":109,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}