As part of our WordPress Care Package Launch Week, we are releasing a series of blog posts. This blog is on Uptime Monitoring, which comes as part of all our WordPress Care Packages.
Picture the scene. You’ve prepared for months for the launch of your new book. In the week before it’s released, you start accepting pre-orders through your WordPress website. You’re running advertising and social media campaigns, all pointing to your website.
You’re too busy to be checking your website, when you’re alerted to your customers not being able to access the site.
So, Why Do Websites Experience Downtime?
Whilst not an extensive list, I’ve picked out 5 key reasons that can cause website downtime.
Traffic Spikes
The most common reason would be having a sudden spike in traffic going to your website. This would often be caused by going viral, perhaps from being on the news. Often, reliable hosting companies, like 34SP.com will step in to support.
You’ve Been Hacked
A very scary, and very real scenario is a hacker can cause downtime to your website. Often, they will attempt to hack a website to take over your home page, and redirect users. This can have reputational damage as well as loss of sales.
Amazing Work, Fast to Fix and We Only Had 10 Minutes of Exposure to Our Clients
Feedback from A client on our care package who’s website was hacked
Data center problems
Some periods of downtime can be caused by the web hosting company itself. In this case, website uptime monitoring tools come in particularly handy because they allow you to accurately judge how reliable your web hosting company really is.
How Can You Maintain Uptime?
Use Reliable Dedicated WordPress Hosting
A good WordPress Host will lead to good uptime! Hosts will often have an Uptime guarantee of 99.9%+ This equates to ~43 minutes of downtime per month.
Using Staging Sites
If you’re ever fiddling around with code, or installing new plugins, it’s often worth using a staging site. Staging sites are an exact replica of your website, often hosted with the same hosting provider. They allow you to experiment without the worry of using a live website.
24/7 Uptime Monitoring with TEA Websites WordPress Care Packages
You can sign up for monitoring services for your website, but then that’s still another thing to keep an eye on. Remember, you have a business to run!
The good news is, you don’t have to do it yourself! Our byTEA Monitor and byTEA Maintain Care Packages come with 24/7 WordPress Website Uptime Monitoring. Should you need us to support, we’ll be on hand to get you back online during work hours.
