There’s a difference between having a website and having a good, stable and reliable website. A buggy, unreliable site is worse than having no website at all. Nothing turns away a potential customer or partner faster than a bad site. If there is a benchmark to measure a website’s reliability, it has to be the uptime.
Uptime is the amount of time your site remains up and accessible to its users. The higher the uptime, the better the reliability. Downtime is the exact opposite; the amount of site your website remains down and unavailable. Here less is better. If you’re in the market to buy hosting, be sure to check the uptime offered.
But there are some measures you can take to reduce downtime on your website. Here are five of them.
Choose a Reliable Web Host
By reliable, we do not mean a fast web hosting. Look for a hosting provider who offers a stable hosting platform, possibly Linux hosting with cPanel for the best reliability. You can check user testimonials and conduct your own research before choosing one that fits the bill. A reliable host cuts down the possibility of unexpected downtimes by quite a lot.
Take Regular Backups
Downtime is not always the fault of your hosting service. Downtime can also be caused by a virus or malware that has infected your website. In such a scenario, there’s nothing your hosting provider can do. But you can. With regular backups, you can quickly restore your website data and minimise your downtime. It is best to automate your backup process to avoid lapses.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
If your hosting server goes down, your site goes down with it. A CDN protects you against such an eventuality with redundancy. It creates multiple copies of your data and stores it across a global network of servers. This is done to speed up page loads at the user’s end. But if your server goes down, the CDN serves data from one of the others, thus minimising downtime.
Shore up your Defenses
Security is a prime concern for websites. But even basic Shared Hosting plans offer some degree of security. Majority of web hosting in India runs on Linux, which is a highly secure operating system. You can easily configure it for better security. But we highly recommend more robust, third-party security measures that can scan and monitor your website for any suspicious activity.
Keep your System Clean
A website becomes cluttered with unused coding, temporary files and old caches. The longer it remains up and running, the more cluttered it becomes. This clutter will eventually choke your system and may even cause it to crash. Take action before things get too bad. Conduct periodic audits of your hosting platform and clear out any unused files, images and videos; anything that is not required has to go. This will keep your site in the pink of health and reduce downtime.
If your website is experiencing frequent downtimes, you will soon lose your users. Follow these simple tips to ensure that your website never remains unavailable for too long.
