What to do if your website goes down?

We’re so sorry this happened. Note that our team is here to help and support you! Below are several steps that you can take in this case to restore your website.

Since there are so many reasons why a website might go down, we've split it down into 4 cases.

Case 1: My website loads as a blank page.

What to do in this case? 

1. If you see a white screen, but you are still able to access the dashboard, then this means that most likely there is a cache issue due to an update.
   In order to solve this, simply clear your cache and cookies. Here's how.
2. If the solution above did not work, then we assume there aren't enough resources allocated from your server. Don't worry if this sounds too complicated, you just need to get in touch with your hosting's support team and ask them to increase your memory limit to 256M or even 512M.
3. If the published pages are blank, and you cannot access the dashboard, then this means that there is a serious server issue. There are hundreds of possible causes, but the most often that occur are: either the server failed, and it needs some hours to get back online, or the hosting plan expired and the website was blocked.

Case 2: I receive a 502/503/504 error when I try to access my website.

We're sorry, but you can’t do anything on your end. When you see that there is an error that starts with 500, then this for sure is a server-related issue. 

In these cases, the best thing to do is to contact the hosting support team and ask them to help with the issue inspection, as no one will be able to help you but them.

Case 3: I tried to launch my website, using the FloLaunch plugin, and now all my content is erased.

First things first, please do not panic! Fortunately, your work is safe and you'll be able to restore it.

Important: Do not make any restores of database backups.

We can help you with launching the website manually. For that, we’ll need to have access to the website’s files and database. Not all hosting companies give access to those elements, thus it will be needed to contact the host support team and kindly ask them to help with this case. 

You can follow the steps described in this article, where we cover in detail what steps must be done in order to manually launch a clone site.

Case 4: My website shows some strange Asian symbols, instead of my text. Also, the same thing happens when I search for my website in search engines. 

Please do not panic and take a deep breath! Your website was hacked. First, if the attack indeed happened, then it could happen that big parts of the website’s content were erased and nothing is supposed to return the previous version, automatically.

In such cases the first thing to do is to change all passwords for all accounts: WordPress, Database, Hosting account.
After that, install a security plugin on your website.
From our experience, WordFence seems to be the best one on the market.
Lastly, contact Sucuri.
They specialize in restoring hacked websites and also will help with the security of the website.