How to Fix Your WordPress Site is Down Error

The first thing to do is to check that you’re up to date with paying your hosting bills. An unpaid bill, or one that you thought was paid and was not, can sometimes lead to your website being taken down. Normally, you should have received a warning, but these can sometimes end up in your spam folder.

As well as paying for your hosting, you will need to pay for your domain name. Check that your domain name has been paid for and registered to you for the year. This can be done with the company that you bought the domain name from.

It might not be a problem with your website, but an outage of your server. While most hosting companies have 99% uptime, it isn’t always the case. Therefore, you need to check with your hosting provider that your website is active. They might also be able to tell you why the website is down, if it isn’t a server problem.

You might also have a PHP memory error, this is common if you’re seeing a white screen of death. To solve this you will need to increase your PHP memory allocation. To do this, use an FTP client, like FileZilla to access your WordPress website files. Look for the file that is labelled wp-config.

Open this up in a text editor and then change the line that reads like this (with XXX being replaced by a number). Try doubling the number, that normally works.

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', 'XXXM' );

Once done, save the document and ensure it is installed onto your server. Then check whether the error is still there.

Another problem is that your website has a conflict as a result of a plugin/theme. You will need to go into your WordPress files through an FTP client and then disable all of your plugins/themes. This can be done by changing the plugin/theme folder names to plugin_inactive and theme_inactive and then renaming them back to the old names.

If your site now works, it was a plugin or theme causing the problem. You can reactive them one at a time to find out which one caused the problem and then remove it.