Why has your site suddenly stopped working?

Answer 1

Your site has been working fine for months and suddenly it stops working and displays an error page or a blank white screen. First you call your Website designer / developer and find out that they have not made any changes in weeks. What's going on? The site was fine last night.

There are only two real possibilities here:

1. Hackers have broken into your website and/or your website server and have done something to break your website.

• Assuming you have a copy of your entire website, first delete ALL the current files to ensure you get all the hidden hacker files as well.
• Try re-uploading a clean copy of your website and website database or call your host company and ask them to roll it back a few days.
• Change all your ftp and hosting c-panel passwords using a 10 digit random password generator.
• Update your website software to the latest version and install all new security patches.
• Limit access to your server to only those that really need it.
• Buy and install a quality website security software like the Website Guardian.

2. Your host company has upgraded their server software or made some other change to their servers, breaking your website in the process.

• Call your host company to see if you can find out what they did. Often they will deny doing anything because they do NOT wish to be responsible for fixing it. If your host is willing to fix it...consider yourself one of the lucky ones!
• If you see the errors displayed on your screen then research them on Google and see if you can fix them yourself.
• If your screen is blank then download the apache error files and try to fix them one by one using Google as a reference.
• If you cannot make heads or tails of it then contact the Website Troubleshooter to help.