Your site is down. Here is the first hour.

What to check, what to leave alone and what to send your developer, so the fix starts from facts instead of guesses.

Oct 06, 2026 3 min read By the BearStack team

A business owner on the phone, checking her website on a laptop

When a website stops working, the first hour decides how long the outage lasts. Most of that hour is about collecting facts, not fixing things.

00–10

Confirm what is actually down

Open the site on your phone with Wi-Fi switched off. If it loads there, the problem may be your office network, not the website.

Then check the parts separately: the home page, a product page, the checkout, the admin login and your business email. Write down the time you first noticed and exactly what you saw.

10–20

Rule out the outside causes

Three things take whole sites offline and are quick to check from your inbox:

Domain renewal. An expired domain stops both the website and email.
Hosting invoice. Some hosts suspend an account soon after a missed payment.
SSL certificate. This is what puts the padlock in the browser. When it expires, visitors see a security warning instead of your site.

20–35

Change nothing yet

It is tempting to reinstall plugins, restore last month’s backup or ask three people to try fixes at once. Each change hides evidence and can lose orders placed since the backup.

If you know something changed recently, such as an update, a new plugin or a theme edit, note it down. That single detail often saves the most time.

Rule of thumb

One person changes things. Everyone else writes down what they see.

35–50

Tell customers what you know

A short, honest note on your social channels or by email stops the same question arriving fifty times. State the impact, what is being done and when you will update.

Status message template

Our website is currently unavailable. We are checking the status of orders already placed. We are working on it and will post an update by [TIME, TIMEZONE]. For urgent orders, contact us on [PHONE OR EMAIL].

50–60