⚑When something is stuck

First check whether it really is the website:

1. Open it from another device and over the mobile network. Very often it is your own network or a cache.
2. Is the domain still running? An unpaid or expired domain is switched off silently — the most common reason for a sudden disappearance.
3. Has anything been changed in the domain management? Including by someone else, for example in the course of an email migration.
4. Do you get a certificate warning instead of an error message? Then the site is there; only the encryption is stuck.

If none of this applies and the site does not load from anywhere, it is a fault — report it then.

What you can do immediately: make sure your phone number can be found even without the website.

By far the most common report, and in nine cases out of ten the same cause:

1. Saved but not published. These are two different steps. Check this first.
2. Browser cache. Ctrl + Shift + R, or a private window.
3. Wrong page edited. With similarly named pages, this happens more quickly than you think.
4. Wrong language version. Changing the English version does not change the German one.
5. A symbol instead of the page. If the section is a reusable symbol, it is maintained there.

Finally, check in a private window — there you see what your visitors see.

Usually there is content behind it that cannot be processed:

• A very large image that has just been uploaded.
• An HTML section with incomplete code.
• A reference to something deleted — a form, a symbol, an image.

What you can do:

1. Try again. Some things are a temporary state.
2. Look at the page changed most recently. What did you do immediately before?
3. Remove the last section and try again. If it works then, you know where the problem lay.

If it persists: report it — stating which page and what was changed last. That is the information that shortens troubleshooting.

Stay calm — and take it step by step:

1. How bad is it? A typo can wait. A wrong price, a wrong phone number or a legally sensitive text cannot.
2. If it is urgent: defuse it immediately. Empty the section or take the page out of the navigation and publish again. That is quicker than looking for the right text.
3. Then correct it at leisure and publish again.

What you cannot undo: that someone has seen it. For anything that affects customers — a wrong price, a wrong date — a short note is more honest than a silent correction.

And for next time: use a release for anything that affects several pages. Then there is a point at which someone takes another look.

By symptom:

• Not visible at all: the image has been deleted from the media library while still in use. Upload it again and insert it.
• Cropped wrongly: the block brings all images to the same shape. Crop the image before uploading so that the essential part is in the middle.
• Rotated: some phone photos carry the rotation as additional metadata. Open the image and save it again; then it is burnt in permanently.
• Blurred: the image was too small. For a background image it should be at least 1600 pixels wide.
• Distorted: very unusual aspect ratios. Crop it to a standard format.

Check in this order — the first two explain almost everything:

1. Spam folder. The most common reason. Add the sender to the exceptions.
2. Is the correct recipient address stored? Especially after a change of staff.
3. Fill in the form yourself and submit it. Does the message arrive? Does the entry appear in the list?
4. The entry is in the list, but no email came? Then the problem is the delivery, not the form — your enquiries are not lost.

And as a precaution: look at the list of entries once a quarter, independently of the emails. A form whose notification has been landing in spam for months would otherwise go unnoticed by everyone.

It is almost always the browser, not the program:

1. Hard reload. Ctrl + Shift + R.
2. Close other windows. A browser with forty open tabs has no memory left.
3. Switch off extensions. Ad blockers and “security” extensions sometimes interfere with input fields.
4. Another browser. This narrows it down conclusively.

What you should do beforehand when working on a long text: save in between. A browser that hangs takes unsaved input with it.

And if it keeps happening on a particular page: that is a bug and should be reported, stating which page and what you are doing there.

First check whether it really has gone:

• Another language version? The text is then in the version in which you wrote it.
• Another section? With several text sections one below the other, it is easy to mix them up.
• Not saved? If the browser froze, the input had not been saved.
• Someone else changed it? The change history will tell you.

If it really has gone: the published version may still have it. Open the public page and copy it back from there — that works as long as you have not already published again.

As a precaution: write long texts in a word processor first and paste them in.

One step at a time:

1. Check the address. A space at the end when pasting is the classic.
2. Reset the password instead of guessing further.
3. Is the account still active? After a change in the team, it is sometimes switched off.
4. Private window. This rules out extensions and old session data.
5. Is the address right? The administration is at an address of its own, not at that of your website.

If the reset email does not arrive: check the spam folder. And remember that a reset link is only valid for 30 minutes.

Four details — with them a report is dealt with in minutes; without them, in days:

1. Which page (address to copy).
2. What you did, step by step up to that point.
3. What happened and what you expected.
4. When, roughly, and with which browser.

What also helps: a screenshot. What does not help: “it doesn’t work any more”.

And report it while it is happening. A fault that occurred two weeks ago and is described today usually can no longer be traced.

These five moves explain most of all reports and take two minutes:

1. Hard reload (Ctrl + Shift + R).
2. Private window.
3. Another browser.
4. Another network — your phone as a hotspot.
5. Is it published? The perennial favourite.

If something is still left after that, it is probably genuine, and then the report is valuable too, because you have already ruled out four causes.

Write in the report what you have checked. That saves a query.