What happens if my domain expires?

The site and its email stop working immediately. There is then a grace period in which you can renew normally, followed by a redemption period with a substantial fee, and finally release — at which point anyone can register it, including people who target expired domains.

How often should I back up my website?

As often as you would be willing to lose work. A brochure site that changes monthly needs monthly backups; a store taking orders needs daily at minimum. The frequency matters less than two other things: storing them off-host, and having actually restored one.

Do I need SSL on a website that takes no payments?

Yes. Browsers mark any HTTP page with a form as "Not secure", HTTPS is a confirmed ranking signal, and certificates are free with automated renewal on any serious host. There is no scenario in which a public business site should still be served over HTTP.

Security and hosting

Why did my website suddenly go offline?

Work through the four common causes in order: an expired certificate, an expired or lapsed domain, an unpaid hosting invoice, and a failed deployment or update. Between them these account for most sudden outages on small business sites.

Answered by Anas Bin Masud 208 words 3 sections

Diagnose in this order

Read the browser message. A certificate warning is different from "site cannot be reached", which is different from a 500 error.
Check whether the domain still resolves — a WHOIS lookup shows the expiry date.
Check your hosting account for billing notices or a suspension message.
Check whether anything was deployed, updated or edited in the last 24 hours.
Check from a second network — a local DNS or routing fault can look exactly like an outage.

What each symptom usually means

Certificate warning: Automated renewal failed. Usually fixable in minutes once noticed.
Cannot be reached: DNS or domain problem. Check expiry and nameservers.
500 error: The server is running but the application is failing. Check recent changes and logs.
Suspension page: Billing, or a terms issue. Read the message rather than guessing.

How to find out before a customer does

External uptime monitoring with alerts to a phone. It costs little or nothing, and the entire value is in the minutes between failure and awareness.

The longer version

This answer is deliberately short. If you want the full treatment, Website maintenance: the routine that prevents silent failure covers it in about 4 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.

Who answered this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan — fifteen live client sites, six of them stores taking real payments. These answers come from those projects rather than from a content brief. More about how I work, or ask me something directly.