Recently, we spoke about why websites crash. Anything from broken code, server maintenance, traffic spikes, expired domains, and website attacks can be a culprit in bringing your website down. 

Today we are going to be talking about how to prevent your website from going down in the first place. Check out these proactive measures you can take to prevent website downtime and ensure your website stays online when you need it most. 

 

Choose a Reliable Host

 

The most important step you can take to prevent downtime is to choose a reliable host. If you choose a low-price or free web hosting company, you risk the chance of your website being offline more often than online. An important factor to consider when picking a hosting package is how much traffic you are expecting your website to receive. If you plan on building a high-traffic website like an eCommerce site, you’ll need to pick a solid host that can handle high volumes or fluctuating amounts of traffic.

Canadian Web Hosting guarantees a 99.99% uptime and we offer a variety of plans to meet your needs, from shared web hosting to VPS hosting.

 

Keep Your Website Up-To-Date

 

Make sure everything on your website is updated regularly, including any downloaded themes or plugins. This will keep your website running smoothly and hopefully avoid it from crashing. Additionally, out of date versions of plugins or themes can be compromised by hackers who have found flaws in the previous code.

 

Keep Your Domain and Hosting Up-To-Date

 

In addition to keeping your website up-to-date, make sure that your domain name and web hosting are also accounted for. Something as small as forgetting to renew your domain name can bring your entire website down. To make it easier for yourself, set your hosting and domain to “auto-renewal.”

 

Consider Purchasing a CDN

 

A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, caches versions of your website in multiple geographical locations so that it is easier to load. This can help act as a buffer in times of increased traffic. A CDN can improve your overall page load, as well as protect your page from spammers, bots, and DDoS attacks.

Our sister company Canadian Cloud Hosting offers CDN to optimize site performance.

 

Consider Installing a Monitoring Service

 

Lastly, you may want to consider downloading an external website monitoring service that alerts you if your website is down. These monitoring systems work around the clock so that you, and not a customer, can be the first to know if your site goes down. Canadian Web Hosting also offers a malware scanning package which protects your website from digital attacks through an automated security solution.

Website downtime can not only affect your website’s profitability, but also customer satisfaction and search engine ranking. Be vigilant and prevent website downtime before it happens.

 

Got any questions about how to prevent website downtime or what causes it? Feel free to ask us in the comments below or tweet us at @cawebhosting.