07/28/2014

Is Your Site's Success a Sign of Impending Downtime?

You came up with the perfect business idea. You designed your site and put it live on the Web. You advertised and marketed just as you were supposed to. All of your efforts paid off and your site is experiencing unprecedented success, just like you knew it would. The question is, do you know whether or not your site is actually ready for that success, or is that success a sign of impending downtime? Here are some things you need to consider if your site has experienced significant growth.

Are You on a Shared Server?

When you first selected a hosting plan for your site, did you select a shared server plan or a dedicated server? Chances are that you selected a shared server plan, as they tend to be much more affordable and more reasonably priced for start-up sites. The problem is, you do share the resources of the server with other sites. When you site starts experiencing significant growth and traffic, it could be a problem. When you are promised "unlimited" hosting on a shared hosting plan, you aren't really getting what you think you are. No, the hosting provider won't put a limit on the bandwidth and resources you can use, unless your site's resource usage begins interfering with the performance of other sites on the server. If this happens, you may find your site offline without warning when your hosting provider suspends your service. That is going to equate to a lot of website downtime that you don't want or need, all because your site succeeded just as it was meant to. If you are on a share server or if you have a plan that limits the resources you can use, keep an eye on how much your site is actually using. You may need to upgrade your plan sooner rather than later to prevent website downtime. If your site is consuming a significant amount of resources, you may want to consider transferring to a dedicated server hosting plan.

Put Website Monitoring Into Place

The more successful your site becomes, the more significant website downtime will become. While an hour of downtime might have only cost your site a few dollars in the past, it can now cost your site hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars now that your site has achieved success. This means you have to be proactive in minimizing downtime so you can maximize your profits. That means putting website monitoring service into place. A quality website monitor watches your site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every minute of the day. If your site goes down, you know about it the moment it happens because a quality website monitoring service will notify you via email, text, and phone. That means you can get to work even faster to get your site back up and running. If your site is experiencing performance issues that may be an indication of impending downtime, your website monitor will let you know about it and you can take measures to fix the problem and ensure that downtime doesn't happen, saving your company's profits.

Don't Get Punished for Your Site's Success

It is ironic, but your site's success can actually lead to downtime and lost profits. Don't let this happen. Make sure you are on top of your hosting plan, your site's performance, and your site's downtime to ensure that your success has not had an impact on your site's performance and reliability.