Its a normal tendency of a site owner to put all blames on your host when the site is down or something is wrong and we email the support team saying its not working please sort it out.

Well many a times there is no problem on the server side and we assume that support team will always ( yes they do ) but there are some ways we can make things better and work together with the support team by providing them what went wrong so the problems get solved faster.

I had talk with my Host and support team , Asmallorange, and they told me lot of things other than the points I collected based on my experience. Keep them in mind, follow it and you will not only solve the problems faster but improve your relationship with your host too.

Things you should do when site is down or In case of other problems .

#1 Make A treacert check

“tracert” is a network command which can be executed on windows dos prompt as TRACERT SITENAME . This returns a trace of route from your current network to the site and shows how much time it took. If you see there is more time taken from one hop to another You will know where the problem is.

#2 Check if you site is opening in all browsers

I faced this recently when My site was giving a blank page in Firefox, Page not available in IE and one one other browser I got the message that web server was down.

This problem occurs when your web server , which in my case is APACHE, does not respond well. You will need to restart it if you have direct control like on VPS or You can state the same problem to your host and he will know what to do .,

#3 Find what’s your IP

Another Issue I once faced was I was unable to access my site inspite of trying a lot of times. This generally happens if there is a problem in Your DNS settings. Few ways to fix this is flushing DNS or restarting your modem too.

In case that also does not happen there are chances that your IP is being blocked . WhatIsMyIP is one service which allows you to do so.

#4 Ask Your Friends if your site is working for them

Now sometimes it happens that there is network problems and you can’t access the site but others can. Ask some of your friends or family to check if its working for them . Preferably if you ave some international friends ask them too. It can gives you can edge when solving the problem.

#5 Get A screenshot

Whatever you see they might not. So best is if you can send them an image of the problem. This will help them to see the true nature of problems.

#6 Link Pointing to Same or similar Problem

If you can read errors for the problem you see, try Googling it . Sometimes there is chance that you might solve it yourself and if not your host will read the link and get him to know some problem which you might not be seeing.

#7 Tell them a complete story

Tell them what You were doing before the problem occured. Sometimes mistake happens from our side and we don’t realize it. Its similar to when you go to a doctor. They ask you if you ate something or was somebody else was ill. They ask so they can diagnose well. Your host is like a doctor who can diagnose well if you can tell them every thing or maximum.

• What exactly did you do ?
• What was the exact result ?
• How did that result not meet your expectations ?

#8 Replicate the Problem or where they can see same affect

This is little difficult but sometimes problem occurs and they go other second. This keeps on happening and your host might not find anything. In this kind of situation you can give them the steps which led to that point or your experience can tell when it happens generally

Anything that is relevant to the problem and always include an URL where we can replicate the problem along with any steps/login credentials needed/required.

#9 Which of your site got hit ?

This is one major problem when it comes to people who have lot of site hosted at one host and they just shoot out that “He my site is not working”. On the support site its really confusing if they don’t know what your domain is or which site is affected. Send them you account name and site which got affected clearly.

• Account Name
• Addon Domain,
• Parked Domains

#10 A properly formatted email

An email which is well formatted makes less confusion and quick effort. Try to write an email like this

• What You see with an Image
• Did you do something before it
• What was expected
• Tracert Report and Your IP in case site is down
• A link to possible error which was seen by somebody else.
• Your account and Domain Affected

That should solve most of your trouble and time. There could be N number of ways we can talk and find. What you see above is list of my experience. If you have gained any experience do tell us in comments and we will learn together.

Thanks to Andrew of my hosting who helped me in completing this article with his experience

Tags: dns settings, relationship, tracert, web server, whatismyip