Every internet surfer must have experienced this. You enter a website URL in the address bar and hit enter, but instead of opening the webpage, your browser throws an error. You double check the address you typed, see everything is perfect, yet the webpage is not accessible. Well, before you try googling the meaning of the error shown by your browser, you can go through this article and find out the common reasons behind a website being inaccessible:
Expiration of Domain Name
A domain name is registered only for a predefined time. You need to prepay for the time period you want to use the domain. In case the domain name has expired, in general, a default site will be presented to the visitors with a link to find more information. The website will stay as it is until the owner renews the domain. To do so, the owner needs to login to the domain registrar account and pay the dues. Many registrars don’t expire the domain even after the stipulated time is over, thereby, giving the owner an extra time period. To avoid expiration of domains, owners can set up email notification or enable the auto-renew option (Auto-renew should only be activated if you trust your domain registrar and it is a reputed name in the industry).
Incorrect DNS Settings
To make sure that your web hosting is functioning properly, the domain’s DNS records should be matching to that of the server which hosts your account. If you are not sure, you can ask your hosting provider for this to be set up properly.
No Index File
While opening a webpage, the first few files that the server tries to open are: index.html, index.htm and index.php. This is the default order that is followed, unless something else is specified in the .htaccess file. In case, these files are not present, the web server will display a list of all the directories and files. If the index file is blank, the browser will show a blank webpage as well. You can also see blank page if the PHP script has some problem or the script you use has error reporting disabled.
Apart from these three aforementioned issues, your website can be inaccessible because of networking connectivity as well. In such a case, it’s important for the owner of the website to reach out to the hosting provider and come up with a possible solution as soon as possible.
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