What to Do If Your Site is Down

Get your site back online as quickly as possible. Maximize your website’s uptime with Jetpack Monitor.

If you have received an email alert from Jetpack’s Downtime Monitor service, please go through the following steps to get things back up and running again.

If you would prefer to deactivate the Jetpack Monitor service completely, please check these instructions.

Retrace your steps

If your site has gone offline, consider trying to determine what might have caused it by following these steps:

1. Review the status included in the downtime alert email. Jetpack Monitor will record the status of your site. This can provide clues to help determine why your site is down.
2. Think about any recent changes you made on the site that might have caused the problem. For example, if you recently installed or activated a plugin, it may have had an error that caused the site to go down.
3. Review the site’s Activity Log to check for any recent changes that may have created the issue.
4. If you suspect that a plugin is the cause, deactivate that plugin via FTP access or your webhost’s file manager by changing the name of the plugin’s folder inside the /wp-content/plugins/ directory on your server. Your host can help you with that if necessary.
5. If you’re not sure whether a plugin is actually to blame for your site going offline, try testing by deactivating all plugins. If that brings the site back online, then you can try activating each plugin one by one until the site goes down again to determine which one is making trouble.

Nervous about deactivating plugins on your live site when testing? Try out the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin to create a special test version of your site (as a logged-in user) where it starts off with plugins disabled and a minimal theme applied.

Check for error messages

If you see an error message on the site, check if the error is mentioned on this list of common WordPress errors. If so, follow the guide to see if you can remove the error. If you can’t fix it, be sure to copy the error or take a screenshot to reference later.

If you see only a blank screen, that may be what’s known as the ‘White Screen of Death’ (WSOD). In this case, you can follow the step-by-step guide on How to Fix the WSOD.

Check for emails about security threats

If you received an email letting you know that Jetpack identified a potential threat on your site prior to your site going offline, or if you suspect your site has been hacked, you can follow this guide to secure your site, eliminating possible malware issues and strengthening your site for the future.

Access your host control panel

Look up who your hosting provider is (you can check one of the emails confirming your website, for example, or your password manager if you’re using one) and log in to their control panel. From there, you should be able to control the status of the website and see if there’s any problem with the website loading.

Contact your host

The last thing to try before to get your website back online is to contact your webhost for assistance. They have direct control over your site and server and can check their error logs to find the exact cause of the issue. They can most likely fix the problem for you or at least point you in the next best direction.

Restore with Jetpack

Jetpack may be able to restore your site, even if it’s down, as long as the site has a working WordPress installation, and you’ve added working server credentials. You have two options to restore:

1. (Automatic) Perform a restore of one of your restore points.
2. (Advanced) Download a backup and upload it manually.

Please note that restoring the website via Jetpack does not guarantee it will keep working, as the underlying problem may have been restored along with everything else.