Don't panic. This may be easier said than done, but panicking will not help you. If you need to panic, allow yourself a few minutes to panic to get it out of your system, then relax.
Your WordPress website may never crash; however, "never" is a long time, so I'm assuming you will need this kind of help at some stage. You wouldn't be reading this article if everything was running smoothly.
We want you to be happy and not sad about your WordPress website. Whatever it's doing at the time.
Some of these tips depend on how technical you are. If you're not technical, it's easier to reach out to someone else so that you don't make things worse.
Do you have a webcare plan?
If you have a webcare plan, then contact them. This may seem obvious, but they may already know about your WordPress website crashing and dealing with it. The whole point of having a webcare plan is that you have peace of mind while the experts deal with your website. If you don't have a webcare plan you can check out our webcare plans here.
Are you technical?
If you don't have a webcare plan in place for your website and are not technical, reach out for some WordPress support. There is a WordPress forum, and if you know what plugin or theme is causing the issue, you can ask on the forum. There is also a general fixing WordPress forum, but it depends on who is around and how quickly you'll get an answer. Some businesses (like my business KISS WP Websites) offer WordPress support for one-time fixes. For WordPress support please contact us here.
Do you have access to a recent website backup?
If you have access to a backup after you've done an update that has gone horribly wrong, you can restore the backup. This will solve the issue in the short term, but you'll still need someone to work out what went wrong.
Has this happened part way through performing updates?
If you're part way through performing updates such as plugins/themes and you can continue, sometimes the website will sort itself out once all the updates have been done. That's assuming you still have access to the backend of the website.
Is your hosting company okay?
Check the status of your hosting company. Most hosting companies will have a status page on their website to let you know if all services are working correctly. If they are, then you know it's not your hosting company.
Is your website hosting functioning okay?
If you have access to the hosting check that your hosting check that you can still log into it, especially if you have cPanel hosting. If you can't log into it, there may be an issue with the hosting company, even if it has yet to be reported on their website. Give them a call to check.
Check the error log
If you're logged into cPanel, you can check the error log. The error log is a file that logs all the errors on your website. You should check the end of the log file and work backwards since the most recent entries are at the bottom. This may tell you that a particular plugin is giving an error. If that's the case, you can deactivate that plugin if you have access to the website's back end or rename the directory folder for that plugin. Contact the plugin developers to see if they know the cause of the error and, if so, how quickly they can fix it.
In Summary
If you are not technical, it's easier to contact someone like us to work out what has gone wrong.
If you are technical, go through the steps here until you work out what has happened to your website.
