Troubleshoot Your Website
We have all been on a website where things are broken or are not working correctly. This does not necessarily mean that the website has been hacked and is unsafe. As a website owner, how can you Troubleshoot an issue like this without the help of professionals? Where do you start, that will not hurt your website? Today, I will help you learn a few tips and tricks on the most common issues.
Issues with Your Site and How to Troubleshoot Them
You Have Made Changes to Your Site, but They Don’t Show Up!
Here at Nextfly, we often are told that our clients cannot see the changes that we made on their site. This also happens when clients make their own edits. What could cause an issue like this? For this issue, it is likely that the web browser that you are using is pulling up an older cached version of your site, and it not pulling up the current site from the server. This can easily be corrected with a hard refresh of your page. To do this you will click on the page that is not loading correctly and typing control, shift, R (or command, shift, R for Mac). This will clear the cache being held on your web browser.
You Downloaded a Plugin and Now Things Are Broken
Not all plugins are built the same, and not every one of them will work with each other. Just like medications there are some that just don’t work well with others. The difference with plugin is they may not always give you a warning, and it isn’t always when you download them. There are times where updating your current plugins can break other parts of your site. How do you fix this, you would ask? There is a way you can deactivate a plug in without removing it and the data from your site. When you go to the plugins tab on your site, you will then go one by one deactivating plugins. We say to do one at a time, that way you can pinpoint which plugin may be causing the error. If you do too many at a time, the issue may stay hidden.
You have not Touched Your Site in a While and Your Site is Broken
We all get busy and cannot check up on our own websites on a daily or even weekly basis. Well what happened when you were away and then came back to a broken site? Websites are like anything else in technology, they are constantly improving themselves for bug fixes, compatibility, and more. A few times a year, your WordPress will say that it is ready for an updated. You will want to complete these updates as early and as often as possible, so that you do not fall behind. HOWEVER, the biggest warning I will ever give you if you are updating WordPress or plugins is to be sure you have a backup available to use, if something should happen to your site. It is not common, but we have seen updates cause more issues than they were supposed to fix. That’s the thing with technology, it is not guaranteed to work 100% of the time.
You have Lost All of Your Information Before, and You Don’t Want it to Happen Again
Have you ever completed an update on your phone, and it was restorable after that? Has your phone ever decided to crash without warning? Websites can do this as well. We do not always have an answer to what has happened, and we cannot always guarantee that your information is retrievable. Therefore, it is important to be on a server that can guarantee you at least monthly backups. Our Nextfly servers give you the comfort of knowing your sites are being backed up every single Sunday night. Without fail, if you are hosting with us, we are sure to help you out with any issue you may have.
Reach Out to Us
We understand that not every fix can be solved with a few troubleshooting steps, and sometimes bringing in the big muscles are needed. If you are having issues beyond your control, feel free to reach out to our skilled team, at Nextfly Web Design. We love to keep our clients happy and coming back for more.