Nowadays almost everyone at least partially lives in a digital space, browsing the Internet most of the day for various reasons. From chatting in the messengers and reading daily news to receiving emails and working on large-scale projects. Therefore, if you are working on your own business, then having a website for it is a must. But that’s not all that there’s to it.
Simply having a website for the business is not enough to hold its ground in its respective niche. To be competitive, it is vital to understand the rules of the Internet and how everything works there. To achieve success, you must satisfy your potential customer’s needs and wants. And to do that it is vital to maintain the website in its topmost shape.
Maintaining the website in the best condition is not an easy task. And first of all, you must ensure that the uptime of the website is at the top from the very beginning. You should pick the first hosting provider for the website with caution, you should maintain the website itself carefully and you should take all possible measures to prevent downtime.
What is Downtime with Website Hosting
First things first – when choosing the hosting provider for the website, you must look at its guaranteed uptime. No matter whether you are already a seasoned website owner or webmaster, or you are only starting and this will be your very first attempt to create the website. Because if the provider is lacking in this matter, then the website will be lacking too. Simply put, the website’s uptime highly depends on the hosting.
But it is important to mention that declared guaranteed uptime should not be taken at face value. There are a lot of hosting services that state that they have 99.95% guaranteed uptime or higher just for advertisement, but in reality, they have it in a way lower percentage. And, actually, this uptime is only possible for old and reliable providers – otherwise even the maintenance downtime will reduce uptime by more than 0.01%.
How to Change My WordPress Website with no Downtime
One of the major causes of downtime is the improper migration of the website. It can easily happen when you will be trying to change hosting as quickly as possible and therefore will be doing everything in a hurry. In this case, even one wrong step will cause the website to become shut down for a long time. And it could happen even before you will be able to get it up and running on the new server. Therefore, it is vital to follow every step properly, even if you are using a convenient platform like WordPress.
First of all, even before you start the migration you should understand that you must not cancel your old subscription before you finish the migration. Because the website could be wiped out from the face of the Internet almost instantly and you will not be able to restore it until you finish everything. Sad but true – hosting providers usually delete everything as soon as you shut down the subscription.
The second thing you should do before migration – is create a backup of your website and store it elsewhere. This way you will be able to load it to the new platform with ease. All that you will need to do there is to set up a valid placeholder. Just to load the website from a backup image on top of the placeholder.
The third thing you should absolutely do after you loaded the backup and checked everything properly – is set up a monitoring routine to check that everything is alright with the website. For example, you can ensure website health with Host-Tracker’s host checker 200 OK service even if you launch it manually without signing up and setting up full-scale monitoring.
And the last thing to do, but not the least overall, is to launch the website from its new place before canceling the old subscription. You can simply manually cut off the old version of the website on the old hosting. This way you will be able to turn everything back on if something goes wrong with the new hosting platform or the website itself.
How to Monitor Website Downtime
Website downtime and uptime monitoring is not something you can deal with by using simple checks and tests. You will need something more reliable and highly automated than manually launched software. Because you must keep the website’s uptime in check literally around the clock. To be able to fix any issue that could occur as soon as possible and prevent downtime from increasing and uptime percentage from decreasing.
For example, you can easily ensure website availability with Host-Tracker platform by easily setting up all the monitoring routines you need. With this platform, even the complete novice will be able to handle such a task. Moreover, if you will need to configure everything with higher precision or if you will need to add any other monitoring routine, you will be able to do it easily with HostTracker. And whenever something happens this platform will use its instant notification system to send you a message via the messenger service of your choice.
Who Monitors Website Downtime
Before you set up a monitoring routine, you must learn that there are two types of downtime. The first type, direct downtime is the situation when the website is considered shut down due to the unavailability of the server. This obviously includes the maintenance downtime. And the second type is overall downtime. This includes all situations when search and advertising services consider the website shutting down.
No matter what reason, if a monitoring parser from Google receives a response about the unavailability of the website, it will be considered unavailable. Even if this happened due to a network failure or when the website was included in DNSBL. And even when the website is actually accessible, but its performance is bad, and the Google parser receives a response timeout.
Taking all mentioned into account, proper monitoring is vital for the well-being of the website. And as it was mentioned earlier, downtime monitoring is a thing that should be observed constantly by a specific set of tools. Therefore, whether you’re an experienced webmaster or a newbie, you should use a dedicated toolkit with automated utilities that will check everything in your stead and inform you whenever something happens.
For example, you can check website and server ping response times with Host Tracker’s ping tracker and use all other available tools to prevent overall downtime from increasing. The system will inform you when problems occur. This way you will be able to fix everything quickly and avoid unwanted loss of audience, reputation, rank in queues of various search and advertising services and the following loss of potential profit.
FAQs: Build New Website without Downtime
- How do I create a WordPress website before going live?Basically, the WordPress platform allows its users to set up and configure the website in “offline” mode or literally without the need to make it live. You can test everything however you want and for as much time as you want. And this feature is very useful not only for the creation and migration of the website, but also for checking and testing the updated website before it will be launched.
- How long does it take for a new WordPress site to go live?The ordPress platform states that going live will take 48 hours. No matter whether you’re launching a brand new website or implementing an update for an existing one.
- How can we transfer a website from one hosting provider to another without downtime?To prevent unwanted downtime during migration from one hosting to another, you should not cancel your subscription on your old hosting before you launch the website from the new one. Because providers tend to wipe the servers as soon as the subscription is canceled. Therefore, you must set up everything, launch the website live and only then you should shut down the subscription on the previous hosting. And don’t forget to make a backup of the website and store it somewhere.
Final Words
Taking all the above into account, avoiding the unwanted increase in downtime is possible if you give it some thought. If you’re just creating your very first website or moving the existing one to the new hosting, you must think and pick the provider carefully. Considering all pros and cons as well as checking on the guaranteed uptime, because uptime and downtime are highly dependent on the hosting.
And even if you picked the provider properly and its guaranteed uptime is real, you must not neglect website monitoring. Without it, you will not be able to effectively and quickly react to sudden website shutdowns and other unexpected situations, But if you use a well-made platform like HostTracker and configure all monitoring routines thoroughly, you will be able to fix things quickly as soon as any problem occurs.
