HELP! My website is down / My site isn't working!

First thing - DONT PANIC!!

I know it's easy for us to say that, but before you get too worried you want to be sure your site really is "down" or "not working".

Your site could appear to be "down" or "not working" for lots of different reasons. The connection between your computer and our site will pass through many different points, and a problem or slow-down at any of these points can make it appear your web site is down. Being able to connect to other web sites is not proof that your site is down as these other sites will operate on different networks and your connection may take a completely different route to these sites.

One thing you can be sure of, and that's if you can't connect to ANY sites on the internet, then there's a good chance it isn't a problem with your web site. In this case it's much more likely to be your local network, your router, or your ISP that is causing the problem.

Here's some quick checks you can make before contacting support.

Check our Monitoring Reports and our Online Portal for information if the service or website is being monitored.

This is important because it will tell you at a glance whether there are any serious issues with your web site. The monitoring reports are updated every 5 minutes with the latest information.
If our monitoring reports show a problem we're already aware of it.

If a monitored service or site stops working - we know about it. Alarms go off, people are paged, big red letters appear on our monitors, and everything stops until we know what the problem is. A problem with a monitored service or web site NEVER goes un-noticed by us.

What that means is that if our monitoring reports show an error, and the service is managed by us, you KNOW we're aware of it and we'll be working on a solution if it's a serious problem. If the problem persists you can check our Online Portal for updates. If your server is self-managed you will have received an email from our monitoring service if that service is being monitored.
Make sure your domain hasn't expired.

Yep, it does happen....more than you would guess. You can use Whois engines or most online domain registration companies to find the domain expiry date.
Ask a friend or family member who is at another location, preferably with a different ISP, if they can reach your site.

The problem could be a local ISP network issue.

This test isn't defnitive unfortunately because if there's a problem at a central location for the internet it could mean your site is up, but the network between your PC and your site isn't for all internet users.
The most important thing you can do is carry out a tracert test.

This will test all the different points your connection makes between your computer and your web site, and if there's a general network problem it will show the error. The results of this test will also help us figure out what is going wrong.

One thing you should note is that your connection to your site could take many different routes for the same page. Some packets (little bits of info about your site) could traveal one route while other packets will take another route. Sometimes a couple of tracerts provides a better picture of what is going on.

Info on how to do a tracert is available here - tracert test. Please send the tracert results with any support request you send.
If you are sure that there is a problem with our systems that we are unaware, of send your support request to support@rackeam.com.

DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE YOUR TRACERT RESULTS and the EXACT error message you are receiving.

Error messages you receive are extremely important and you must send them with your support request.

You could also refer to this page to make sure our support team can be as effective as possible in dealing with your request.

Article ID: 172, Created: April 2, 2014 at 1:22 AM, Modified: April 2, 2014 at 1:26 AM

HELP! My website is down / My site isn't working!

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