7 Tips to Prevent Website Downtime
Achieving 100% up-time is difficult. No web host can assure you that, and if anybody does, then they are not revealing the truth to you. Initially you may fall into their trap and consider buying their service, but in the due course of time, you’ll realize that zero downtime is next to impossible. However, the good news is that by hiring a reliable website monitoring solution, you can come closer to zero downtime. It is to be noted that unplanned downtime is inevitable; hence you need to come up with proper upgrades and maintenance from time to time.
Familiarizing with Downtime Percentages
It is quite obvious on your part to think that website up-time percentages over 99% are acceptable by all means. However, the truth is that there’s a huge difference between a website having an up-time of 99.9% and a website having an up-time of 99%.
If your website has an up-time of 99.9%, this means that your website was inaccessible for 9 hours in a year. If a webhost proclaim that they provide an uptime of 99 percent, then it comes around 3.65 days per year. Let us take an example to explain things further. If you neglect when it comes to maintaining your car, then later on, you will have to invest a huge amount when it needs a repair. Hence, it is always better to maintain your car on a routine basis so that you can keep the repairs to the minimum. The same is the case with your website. If you don’t maintain your website regularly, then your website will suffer from severe downtime that might affect your business badly. However, with adequate website maintenance, you can make sure that your website operates in smooth manner.
Downtime is a potential threat that can lead to huge losses. However, if you take up the adequate measures, then dealing with website downtime will no more sound challenging. Let us now focus on the seven tips using which you can prevent website downtime:
1. Create a Backup of Your Website
During website updates, if you happen to encounter any problems, it may result in a service interruption. So, keeping a regular backup of your website is very important.
2. Software Update is Necessary
The Internet evolves at a rapid pace. Every other day software companies are releasing new versions, patches, and service packs. So it is mandatory to keep your server software up to date, and if using a CMS you should keep it updated with the latest version. This ensures that your website remains secured as well as functional.
3. Optimization is Essential
You’ll find it hard to retain your sales and customers in case your website experiences frequent downtime or is running slow. To prevent this, try minimizing the number of HTTP requests. You can attain this by simplifying the design of your website. Website developers can reduce the HTTP request numbers by minimizing the CSS scripts, combined files, and reducing images.
4. Use Google Webmaster Tools
By using this tool you will be able to get a detailed report pertaining to the visibility of your website online. If Google finds any errors while your website is crawled, this tool ensures to inform you about the same. So you can rectify it, before creating any bigger issues for your users.
5. Use SNMP Protocol to Track Server Downtime
Server monitoring forms an important part of website monitoring. You can keep a track on your server using SNMP internet protocol. The best part about SNMP monitoring is that it keeps a watch on every device that has an IP address and sends you immediate alert.
6. Use a Website Monitoring Service
You can subscribe to a good website monitoring service that keeps you informed about the status of your website. In the event that it detects any errors, the monitoring services will notify you through email, text message, etc.
7. Update Your Domain Name Registration
On extremely rare occasions website owners face this issue but it may also be responsible to create a temporary downtime for your website. Hence, make sure to set your domain name to auto renew. Besides, you can also buy your domain for the next decade and set the domain registrar lock.