Portal Home > Knowledgebase > General Info > Why can't I see my site?
1. Your IP May Have Been Blacklisted
If you cannot access your own site and it has been longer than 10 minutes since your first attempt, your IP address may have been blacklisted from the server.
Why do we do this? It is a security measure used on the server to keep "bots" from trying to access your admin areas over and over again with the hopes of getting in using some generic login info (this is why you should never use a very simple password, and change your password regularly.) If there are more than 5 unsuccessful login attempts on your site (cpanel, cart admin, email, etc.) and your IP address is not on our "whitelist" then it will be blacklisted.
If this happens, know that OTHERS can see your site just fine, it's just affecting YOU. And to fix it, please just submit a support ticket with your IP address and we'll whitelist it. To find your IP address, you can visit: http://www.whatismyip.com
Whitelisting should prevent it from happening to you again in the future. If, however, you reset your modem at home or switch Internet Service Providers, then you would be assigned a new IP address and in that case, it could happen again. We would just need to know your new IP so we can whitelist it.
2. Sudden barrage of Traffic
If you suddenly have more than 50 people on your site at the EXACT SAME TIME, your site can be temporarily disabled. While we all want lots of traffic to our sites, 50 people at the exact same time is unusual and can negatively impact other client sites, therefore the connection to the server may be blocked for a short time until the connections are reduced.
3. Excessive Mail Server Connections
This is when you access your email through Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Mac Mail, etc. and you have the program set to check email too often. You should not connect to the mail server (sending and receiving) more than 60 times in an hour.
So, if you have 1 email address set up in your cpanel, then you should not check it more than every 1 minute. (Don't sit there hitting Send/Receive over and over again if you're waiting for an email to come in.)
If you have 5 email addresses set up in your cpanel, then you should have it set to send/receive no more often than every 5 minutes.
If you have 10 email addresses set up in your cpanel, then you should have it set to send/receive no more often than every 10 minutes. And so on.
4. Server Overload/Outage or Scheduled Maintenance
We have server technicians on duty 24 hours/day who are notified about any problem and who begin to work on it immediately. While we do love interacting with our clients, we do not require notification that sites are down.
Server outages, disconnections, etc. do happen unfortunately. Our server uptime is still at 99% or higher each month. Remember that's counting every minute of every day for the whole month. So if your site is down for 10 minutes straight, it may be an inconvenience to you (and we truly are sorry!) it is completely normal for this to happen every now and then. Maintenance, backups, etc. are run at off-peak hours to avoid problems during normal work hours.
Add to Favourites 
Print this Article
