Something broke: your first 30 minutes

Your website has a problem. Before you panic, work through this calmly, in order. Most fixes are simpler than they feel in the first few minutes.

Step 1: work out what's actually wrong (5 minutes)

Don't assume — check. Open the site from your phone on mobile data, not your home wifi. A home internet outage can look exactly like a site outage.

Try one more device if you can. A free checker like isitdownrightnow.com also rules out a problem with just your own connection.

Write down: the time you noticed it, what the page shows, and what device and network you tried.

If your site is down

Do this:

1. Check your host's status page — most hosts publish one, and a widespread outage isn't something you can fix yourself.
2. If it's just your site, log in to your hosting account and look for a suspension notice. It's often an unpaid bill, not an attack.
3. Contact your host's support with the time it went down and what you see.

Don't: make changes to your site's files while you're not sure what's wrong. That can turn a simple problem into a harder one.

If it looks hacked, or redirects somewhere strange

Do this:

1. Take a screenshot of what you see, including the address bar.
2. Change your hosting and admin passwords straight away, from a different, trusted device.
3. Contact your host or web person immediately — many hosts have a malware response process.
4. Check whether Google has flagged the site: search site:yourdomain.com and see if the results look normal.

Don't: pay a ransom demand, if one appears, without getting advice first. Don't log in again from the device you first noticed the problem on, until you know it's clean.

If your contact form isn't arriving

Do this:

1. Send yourself a fresh test enquiry and check spam, not just your inbox.
2. Check whether the form plugin or service had a recent update — that's a common cause.
3. Confirm the email address the form sends to is still correct and still yours.

Don't: assume no enquiries means no interest. Fix this fast — every day it's broken is real business missed.

If you see a "not secure" warning

Do this:

1. Check your certificate's expiry date — this is the single most common cause.
2. Contact your host; most issue and renew certificates automatically, so this is often a quick fix on their end.
3. Avoid entering any passwords or payment details on the site yourself until it's resolved.

Don't: ignore it. Visitors see this warning before anything else, and most will leave immediately.

If your business email is bouncing

Do this:

1. Check whether your domain's email records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) were changed recently — even a small typo breaks delivery.
2. Ask your email or hosting provider to confirm your domain isn't blacklisted.
3. Test by sending yourself an email from an outside address.

Don't: switch providers in a panic. Most bounce issues are a single record fix.

Who to call, and what to have ready

• Your host — for anything about the server being down, malware, or certificates.
• Your domain registrar — for anything about the domain itself, or its renewal.
• Your web person — for anything about the site's design, content or code.

Before you call any of them, have this ready: the error message, the start time, and what you've already tried.

---

Sitecomb can run a check afterwards to confirm the fix held, in one report, for €9.99. That's security, links, and whether the page loads cleanly.