What Are the 5 Common Web Hosting Problems Faced by Newbies

If you are a first time web hosting user who has just purchased a brand new web hosting account, you will feel eagerly excited and can’t wait to get started to toying around with your new “toy”.  You might already have your website content ready and it’s just a matter of time before you start migrating your files into your new hosting account. When migrating your site to a hosting platform, there are a few common issues you might encounter related to downtime, layout, displaying content, etc. These are some options to look into when facing such issues.

1. I have uploaded my website successfully but I’m seeing a “Coming Soon” text?

If you are seeing this message, there are 2 possibilities. First, your web browser is still loading an old version of your website. Secondly, you might have uploaded your website files to the wrong place on your web hosting. The solutions for both of these can be found below.

To fix the first issue, you just need to perform cache clearance on your web browser. Instructions on how to clear your web browser cache can be found here.

For the second issue, there are 2 methods you can use to fix this problem.

1. Ensure you have uploaded your website files/images into the correct directory on your hosting account.
2. Ensure you have uploaded a valid “index” file into that directory. The “index” file are commonly named as “index.html”, “index.htm” or “default.html”

2. The changes to my website aren’t displaying!

This is again caused by your web browser cache. A simple browser cache clearance and restarting your web browser will do the trick.

3. My website was up just now but now it’s down!

Sometimes when we have made new changes to our website, that action alone could have possibly caused our website down or disappear. However, we shall assume that it is not the case though. In other words, there is typically one of two things that have caused it:

• Your hosting company’s server is experiencing downtime. The easiest way to find out the real cause is by calling them. Or you can find that out by using their online chat service. ServerFreak web hosting company has both telephone and online chat services available at your disposal whenever you need them.
• Your Domain Name Server or DNS settings have changed! If you aren’t sure what that means, contacting your hosting company is a quicker way to solve the issue.

4. My website doesn’t display any of my images!

This is one of the most common issues faced by first time user. If all of your images are missing, there are two possible explanations:

• The images failed to upload to your hosting account. A simple fix is to just try and re-upload them.
• The images are uploaded into the wrong folder. To find out where they’re supposed to be, right-click the area where the image should be on your website and select an option like “Open image in a new tab.” The new tab that opens will show you the URL your website is using — move your images into that directory and they’ll start displaying.

5. My website’s layout looks completely wrong!

You can tell this is happening because your website does not display its original layout or design elements except for text. When this happens, we already know that the root cause of this problem is related to missing website’s cascading style sheet (CSS) file. Here are 2 quick fixes to this issue:

• Try re-uploading your entire site. This will often catch a CSS file that didn’t get uploaded the first time.
• If that doesn’t work, you’ll need to find out where your CSS file is supposed to be located and then move it there.

How to find where your CSS file is supposedly located? Here’s how to do it:

1. Right-click your home page, and then select an option like “View source.”
2. Toward the top of the page, find a line that looks like this: “your CSS file’s directory”
3. Make sure that your website’s CSS file is actually in the directory listed in that line.