Why Your Website Is Not Loading (And It's Not Your Hosting)
Whenever a website is down, many people immediately blame the web hosting provider. In fact, some go a step further and open a support ticket with their hosting provider without first checking whether the issue is actually with hosting, which in many cases it is not.
As a site owner or administrator, you should know that a website not loading does not necessarily mean the hosting server is at fault. Often, the issues arise from something completely different. What's different? Continue reading to find out.
5 Reasons Your Websites Fail to Load
There can be many reasons behind a website fail to load completely. Yet, a hosting server can be one of them, but that is not always the case. The following are five reasons, in addition to hosting issues, that can cause a website to fail to load.
1. Domain Has Expired
Yes, we have seen that happen. Many people register domain names using a secondary email address. Once registered, they disable auto-renewal. But their website is live and getting traffic. This sometimes also happens when owners pay for multiple years in advance and disable auto-renewal.
Time passes, and the domain's expiry date arrives. The domain registrar keeps sending renewal reminders to the registered email address, which no one checks.
Then, suddenly, the extra limit from the registrar expires as well, and the website is redirected to the parking page. In some cases, visitors may see errors such as “server not found”.
If one of your websites isn't loading, first check the domain registration status. If it’s about to expire, renew it immediately. Because when a domain is inactive, your hosting remains online, but no one can reach it.
2. DNS Records Are Not Propagated
This recently happened to someone in our circle. What really happened was that a newbie developer registered a new domain using a newly made email address. Once registered, the domain was pointed to the hosting server on another email account. To do this, changes are made to the domain's DNS configuration. New NS records are added to point the domain to the hosting server.
Well, such record changes usually take up to 48 hours to propagate. The person had everything ready for their site and was in a rush. After changing the NS record, they installed WordPress and implemented the web design they had already prepared.
After finishing uploading the designs, the person switched to incognito mode to check how the site appeared live and was shocked.
There’s only “This site can’t be reached”.
The person came to us with the issue. After listening, we immediately understood that the problem is that the records are not being propagated.
For further verification, we ran the domain name through a DNS propagation checker, which showed older NS records rather than the ones added by the person. We told the person to wait for the records to propagate, and the website would go live automatically.
That said, if you are experiencing a website loading issue with a newly registered domain, check the DNS propagation status. Sometimes the website is fully ready on the backend; what is needed is the record propagation to the global DNS servers.
3. DNS Misconfiguration
Aside from DNS propagation, misconfigurations in DNS records can also prevent a website from loading. Sometimes, we have to make changes in the DNS records. For example, for a connected domain to an external hosting server. Or when there’s a need to migrate a website from one hosting server to another hosting server. During this process, specific changes are made to a domain's DNS records. Any misconfiguration, i.e., a typo error while changing the records, can take down your website.
If your website fails to load after any such change, don’t panic. Just run the domain name through a DNS Lookup tool. The tool will show you all configured records in the DNS setup for that domain.
All you need to do is verify that the values the tool reports are correct. If not, you need to correct them, as they may be causing your website to load slowly or fail to load.
4. CDN Issues
Another reason your website may fail to load is issues with the CDN you are using. Yet CDNs are used to speed up website loading, but issues with the CDNs themselves sometimes arise. Sometimes the CDN fails to fetch content from the origin server, even when your hosting is working fine.
You may see:
502 Bad Gateway
503 Service Unavailable
Origin unreachable
This leads many owners to blame their hosting provider, even when the origin server is running smoothly. We have seen websites fail to load globally due to issues with Cloudflare, one of the most popular CDN services worldwide.
5. SSL Configuration
Last but not least, one reason your website may not load is an incorrect SSL configuration. An expired or misconfigured SSL certificate can stop your site from loading.
Browsers block websites when they detect insecure or mismatched certificates. Visitors usually see warnings like:
Your connection is not private.
This site can’t provide a secure connection.
Your hosting may still respond, but the browser refuses to continue. Open your website in HTTPS and inspect the SSL certificate details. You can also use an SSL certificate checker to confirm what’s wrong.
Wrapping Up
The five most common causes of your website failing to load are listed above, aside from your hosting. A website that won’t load doesn’t always mean your hosting company failed you. Many issues come from domains, DNS, and SSL. When you understand these problems, you can diagnose problems faster and avoid unnecessary stress.
