Why Websites Go down?

[Shaha Noor]

Why Websites Go down?

There are many possible reasons for a website to go down. What's more, the true reason often involves several different causes culminating into one big problem.

    Traffic spikes:
Probably the number one cause of websites going down are sudden spikes in traffic. These can be caused by a surge of viral traffic from sites like Reddit, BuzzFeed, or Quora. A reliable hosting provider who has the necessary means to guarantee uptime even in such situations is really the only way how you can keep your site up and running.
    Scheduled maintenance:
Even websites with excellent optimization require scheduled maintenance, from time to time. Maintenance should happen during off-peak hours, to minimize its potential negative impact.
    Hacker attacks:
Hackers can bring a website down in multiple different ways: they can overload the servers with DDoS attacks, inject malicious code, or steal security credentials, thus forcing the website owners to shut off the site and solve the problem.
    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.
    Website's code issues:
Poor programming can cause an unnecessarily heavy load on servers, result in various database errors, and, ultimately, make the site totally unresponsive.

Of course, there are other factors that could bring a website down, such as domain name (DNS) expiration, domain name seizure, takedown by law enforcement, but these tend to be much less common.

Source: digital.com/