If your site won't load, don't start troubleshooting code yet. Work through this order first: confirm it's actually down for everyone (not just you), check for suspension, then read the exact error code. Most "my site is down" tickets turn out to be one of these three things, and you can rule them all out in under five minutes.
Step 1: confirm it's down for everyone
DNS and browser caches make a site look down when it isn't. Before anything else:
- Load the site in a private/incognito window. If it works there, your regular browser has a stale cached page or an old DNS entry.
- Check it from your phone on cellular data (not wifi). This rules out anything specific to your home network or router.
- Use a third-party checker like downforeveryoneorjustme.com or a public "is it down" tool. These hit the site from outside your network and outside your DNS cache entirely.
- Flush your local DNS cache:
ipconfig /flushdnson Windows,sudo dscacheutil -flushcacheon macOS.
If it loads fine from another network or device, the site isn't down. You're looking at a local caching issue, and there's nothing to fix server-side.
Step 2: check for suspension
If the site is genuinely unreachable from multiple networks, sign in to the portal at portal.flashcloud.com and check for a suspension notice. This is the single most common cause of "my site went down with no warning": an unpaid renewal invoice. If your account is suspended, the portal itself still works, you won't be able to reach the site until the invoice is paid. Go to Billing, pay the outstanding invoice, and the site typically comes back within minutes. See Why was my account suspended? for the full timeline and what to do if you can't pay right away.
If you can't sign in to the portal at all to check, work through I can't sign in to the portal first. A locked-out login is a separate problem from an actual outage, and it's worth ruling out before you assume the worst.
Step 3: read the error code
The exact error your browser shows tells you where the problem lives:
- DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN or "server not found": the domain isn't resolving. Check Domains → your domain → DNS in the portal and confirm the records point where you expect. If you recently changed nameservers, propagation can take a few hours.
- 500 Internal Server Error: something on the server side is failing, usually a PHP error, a broken plugin, or a bad
.htaccessrule. This is where Enabling error logging earns its keep: check/home/your-user/logs/error_logfor the exact line that's failing rather than guessing. - 502/503/504: the server is up but not responding in time, or briefly unreachable. Reload after a minute. If it persists, it's worth a ticket, this usually points to a resource spike or a backend issue that needs a look on our end.
- 403 Forbidden: a permissions problem, a missing index file, or a firewall rule blocking the request. Check file permissions if you recently uploaded via FTP.
- A blank white page with no error at all: almost always a PHP fatal error with
display_errorsoff, which is the normal production setting. Check the error log rather than the browser.
If the page loads but looks wrong, defaced, or is redirecting somewhere unexpected, stop here and go straight to Scanning your website for malware instead of continuing this checklist. That's a different problem with different urgency.
When to open a ticket
Open a ticket if you've confirmed the site is down from multiple networks, ruled out suspension, and the error code points to something server-side (500, 502, 503, 504) that isn't explained by anything in your error log. Go to Support → New ticket in the portal, or use live chat for a faster first response. Include the exact error code, the URL that's failing, and roughly when it started. A real person will pick it up, there's no phone line, but tickets and chat are both staffed by humans who can look at server-level logs you can't see from the portal.