Websites can “break” either from something you did or some external source like hackers or incompatible updates from your hosting company.
Problems caused by software updates.
For those of you with WordPress websites, software updates can sometimes cause issues. Ideally, websites updates should make your site better, but occasionally you’ll get a monkey wrench.
- Erased custom code that causes your website to malfunction or look funny.
- Plugins that become incompatible.
- Forms that stop working.
Whenever you install an update, you should always do a tour of your website to make sure all is well.
Problems caused by hosting updates.
Your hosting company can also cause unintended problems for your website if they are updating their servers, or transitioning to new servers, and thus a new IP address. This situation creates unavoidable problems for your website like:
- 404 Errors.
- Inaccessible pages.
- Downtime.
If this happens to you, don’t freak out! Your website is not dead. In most cases, your domain settings just need to be adjusted to point to the new IP address.
Problems caused by hackers.
Then there are hackers. They want what you got and they are relentless. Hackers will do things like:
- Steel confidential information.
- Inject links and other content into your website.
- Redirect pages and links to different websites.
Don’t take a chance and think they don’t care about your little website, because we’ve seen that mentality cost a lot of money and personal loss. Installing and configuring proper securing settings for your website is a simple step that will help protect you from these major inconveniences.
Problems caused by you.
Finally, sometimes small mistakes can cause big problems! The great thing about a CMS (content management system) website is that you can easily make your own updates and add content. But, if that content includes an image or video that is enormous in size and quality, you could run into problems like:
- Timeouts when loading pages.
- Decreased performance.
- Distorted page layouts .
This is problem is easily solved by removing the media, decreasing its size, and re-uploading it.
Hope is not lost and you don’t need to start over.
In most cases, websites are not broken forever – they just need to be diagnosed and repaired. Hopefully this list of symptoms and causes will point you in the right direction to help your broken website fully recover.
Have anything to add to this post? Tell us in the comments.
