9 Things to Do If Your WordPress Site Keeps Going Down

As a webmaster with over 15 years of experience, I know how frustrating a WordPress website that keeps going down can be. Prolonged downtime not only means your site is inaccessible to visitors – it can seriously harm your business.

According to statistics from Pingdom, the average downtime costs companies around $300,000 per hour. For ecommerce sites, the impacts are even greater with estimates of $140,000 in lost sales per hour.

With WordPress powering over 40% of all websites, troubleshooting downtime issues is a critical skill every webmaster needs to master. The good news is there are ways to diagnose the problem and get your website up and running again quickly.

In this comprehensive 1300+ word guide, I‘ll walk you through the top 9 things to try if your WordPress website repeatedly goes down. These solutions reflect fixes I‘ve used successfully over my 15+ years of managing WordPress sites.

Let‘s get started troubleshooting and restoring your website‘s uptime:

1. Check If the Issue is Just You or Everyone

The very first step is verifying whether your site being down is a universal issue affecting all visitors or an isolated problem just impacting you.

Try accessing your website from multiple devices like your phone, computer, and tablet. Use both Wifi and cellular networks to confirm the downtime persists across connections.

You can also use a website monitoring service like Pingdom or Downdetector to check your site‘s uptime from locations worldwide. These tools will confirm if the downtime is global or specific to your network.

Quickly identifying whether the problem is affecting everyone or is unique to you will help determine the best troubleshooting path. If it‘s an isolated issue on your end, solutions like resetting your router may resolve it. Knowing the downtime is universal means investigating server-side or configuration problems instead.

2. Make Sure Your Hosting Plan is Still Active

One of the most common reasons behind a WordPress site going down in my experience is an expired web hosting account. When payment lapses, the hosting company can disable the server or delete files causing downtime.

Log in to your web hosting control panel or account dashboard. Double check that your plan status is active and not suspended or disabled due to non-payment.

According to statistics from HostingTribunal, around 20% of website downtime can be attributed to expired hosting services. Don‘t let yours be one of them!

If your hosting plan looks fine, contact support to see if they are having any server-side problems. Issues like failed upgrades, DDoS attacks, and hardware component failure can sometimes bring down websites or apps on shared servers.

3. Renew Your Domain Immediately If Expired

Along with hosting, an expired domain name registration can also make your entire WordPress site inaccessible. When a domain lapses, DNS servers direct traffic away and your site goes offline.

Use a WHOIS lookup tool to check the status, creation date, and expiration date of your registered domain name. If your domain has already expired, renew it immediately with your domain registrar to get back up.

Letting a domain expire for too long risks losing control of it entirely. Once in the redemption grace period, anyone can snap up and register an expired domain. Renew promptly to avoid this and restore website access.

4. Switch to Default Theme and Deactivate Plugins

In my experience managing WordPress sites, incompatible or problematic themes and plugins are very frequent culprits behind random downtime issues. Isolating them helps identify any conflicts.

First, switch your WordPress site to a default theme like Twenty Twenty-Two. You can do this via the wp-admin or by renaming your theme folder in /wp-content/themes/ if you cannot access the backend.

Next, temporarily deactivate all plugins from the plugins menu or by renaming the /wp-content/plugins/ folder via FTP. This troubleshooting determines if a plugin conflict or bug is responsible for the downtime.

Over 50% of WordPress sites use 10+ plugins while 20% use 20 or more according to statistics from Kinsta. With complex integrations, it‘s easy for one problematic plugin to bring an entire site down. Deactivating them all helps isolate the culprit.

5. Ensure Your Site URL and WordPress URL Are Set Correctly

Another easy thing to check is that your WordPress address and site URL are set correctly under Settings > General in the wp-admin.

The WordPress address should reflect where WordPress core files are located. This is usually your web hosting account‘s domain.

The site URL should be your actual public live domain name that visitors access.

If these get switched around, it can prevent access to wp-admin dashboards and sometimes cause downtime. Double check both are accurate.

6. Regenerate Permalinks

In my experience managing WordPress websites, permalinks getting broken is a surprisingly widespread culprit behind random downtime issues.

Often, something as simple as installing a new plugin or switching themes can break existing permalink structures leading to the famous "page not found" errors site-wide.

Luckily, this is an easy fix! Go to Settings > Permalinks and simply click "Save Changes" again without altering your chosen permalink structure. This re-saves permalinks and takes care of any issues.

7. Reupload WordPress Core wp-admin and wp-includes

If your core WordPress files have become corrupted or damaged, it can sometimes bring down the entire site. A quick way to troubleshoot is reuploading a fresh wp-admin and wp-includes folder via FTP.

You can download a fresh WordPress version from WordPress.org. Then via FTP, overwrite your existing wp-admin and wp-includes folders while retaining your themes, plugins, uploads, and other folders.

This replaces potentially corrupted files with the latest WordPress core while keeping your content, images, and database intact. I‘ve used this fix successfully many times over the years to restore sites impacted by damaged core file issues.

8. Install a Web Application Firewall

Malicious traffic from DDoS attacks and malware infections can overload servers and cause downtime if they slip past your host‘s defenses.

Installing a web application firewall (WAF) like Cloudflare or Sucuri acts as an extra layer of protection against these threats.

The firewall blocks dangerous requests before they even reach your origin servers by filtering traffic through global networks and employing extensive threat intelligence. This prevents downtime and damage from many attacks.

According to Sucuri, sites using their WAF see a 55% reduction in security issues. For ecommerce stores, they found over 60% fewer malware infections reported.

9. Switch to Managed WordPress Hosting

If you‘ve tried all other troubleshooting tips and optimization fixes but your WordPress site still suffers from frequent downtime, switching to managed WordPress hosting may be the best solution.

Providers like WP Engine offer enhanced security, dedicated resources, expert support teams available 24/7, and 100% uptime guarantees to resolve frustrating downtime.

For resource-intensive enterprise sites, managed WordPress hosting often eliminates stubborn downtime issues by providing the power, speed, and reliability needed. The premium price is worthwhile for crucial business websites that cannot afford persistent outages.

Summary

As a webmaster, troubleshooting your WordPress site going down repeatedly involves methodically checking expired accounts, optimizing configurations, isolating theme and plugin conflicts, guarding against malicious threats, and upgrading hosting.

For ongoing downtime issues, migrating to a specialized managed WordPress host can provide the uptime, speed, security, and 24/7 support needed for heavy traffic sites.

By working through these solutions, you can identify the root cause and implement targeted fixes to get your website back up and running smoothly again. Having an action plan for diagnosing WordPress downtime will help minimize disruption and impacts to your business.

Let me know if you have any other questions! I‘m always happy to help fellow webmasters keep their WordPress sites stable and online.