/ Plain-English guides](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/guides/index.html)/ My website broke — where do I even start? Basics · people search: “My website broke — where do I even start?” # My website broke — where do I even start? WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, or a custom build: the panic is the same. How to tell the easy in-your-panels fixes from the ones that need a rescue. Plain English · no jargon · 4-minute read By Rodrigo Valenzuela Iturrieta](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/about/index.html), the engineer who does the work · Published June 14, 2026 · Updated September 20, 2026 Part of **Servers & Infrastructure](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/services/infrastructure/index.html) — read first, then fix it in 48h. Copy link Print Share Know someone with this exact problem? Pass it on — no email gate. When your website breaks — a checkout that won't load, a suspended page, emails that suddenly land in spam — the first instinct is to Google the symptom and burn three hours in forum threads. Stop there. This guide is the calm version: the quick checks that work on any platform, the three things a rescue always fixes, and the exact moment to hand it to someone who does this for a living. ## Check these first, yourself - Clear the store or site cache — A ready-made copy of your pages kept warm so the server doesn't rebuild everything on every visit., refresh in a private window, then try your phone on mobile data (not the office WiFi). The symptom changing just by switching network is a clue it's your location, not your site. - Check a third-party status page — Shopify Status, your host's status page, your payment provider's status. Sometimes nothing you control is broken. - Look for a hold-up notice from your host, registrar — The company where your domain name is registered — whoever controls that account controls the domain., or payment processor. 'Suspended', 'verify your account', or an unpaid invoice looks exactly like an outage. - Write the symptom down in plain words before you call anyone: what page, what button, what error message, when it started. That description is worth more than an hour of diagnosis. ### When to call a rescue instead of doing it yourself If the quick checks don't clear it, the difference between a small fix and a disaster is who's on the other end. A rescue finds the real cause in the first 12 hours, quotes one flat locked price, and fixes it in 48 — and you never have to understand the code, because the report is written for you, not for an IT department. ### Should you fix it yourself or call a rescue? **Have you tried the free fixes (images, caching, plugins)?If yes and it's still slow → the problem is deeper. **Is your hosting or server the bottleneck?Shared hosting, old PHP, no object cache → server-level problem. **Yes → Speed Rescue Fixed in 48h · from $2,000 ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/rescue/speed/index.html) **Not sure → Send symptom We'll diagnose for free ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/contact/index.html) ## Still have questions? Is Shopify easier to keep running than WordPress?Shopify runs its own hosting — The service that runs your site on a server; the plan you pick decides your speed ceiling and your crash risk., so the server side is invisible to you — but you still hit checkout, app, billing, and access problems, and when you do, you're a merchant, not a developer. On WordPress you own the whole stack: more control, more ways to break. The rescue model covers both.Which of the 20 rescues is mine?You don't have to know. You send the symptom in your own words, and the diagnosis names the ticket. Hacked WordPress, a checkout that crashes on a big day, slow page loads, emails in spam, a stolen domain, a developer who vanished — each maps to one flat-rate rescue.Will I need to learn code to manage the fix?No. You approve a plain-English plan, get a plain-English report at the end, and keep every access key. If you want, you never have to touch anything technical at all. Skip the diagnosis ## Get this fixed in 48 hours, flat rate Same problem, less sleep lost. One of these rescues maps directly to what you're dealing with. security **Hack Cleanup & Malware Removal $3,500 · 48 hours ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/rescue/hack-cleanup/index.html) security **Checkout Crash & Stability Rescue $4,500 · 48 hours ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/rescue/checkout-crash/index.html) performance **Website Speed Optimization $2,000 · 48 hours ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/rescue/speed/index.html) performance **SEO / Google Index Recovery $3,500 · 48 hours ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/rescue/seo-rescue/index.html) Keep reading ## Related plain-English guides More of the questions business owners actually search — same plain-English style, same no-jargon promise. Basics guide **Is a Flat-Rate Website Fix Worth It? What Web Devs Don't Tell You A flat price and a 48-hour fix sounds too good to be true. Here is what the model actually is, what it does and doesn't cover, and how to spot a bad one. Read the plain-English guide → ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/guides/flat-rate-worth-it/index.html) Revenue guide **Tracking Broke and You Didn't Notice: Fix It Before You Spend More Broken tracking never throws an error, it just makes every ad decision worse. Here is how to spot it in five minutes. Read the plain-English guide → ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/guides/tracking-broken-losing-sales/index.html) SEO guide **My SEO Ranking Dropped — Penalty, Algorithm, or Something Technical? A drop in ranking is not one problem, it is three. Sorting them in the right order is half the fix — here is how to tell them apart in minutes. Read the plain-English guide → ](https://getfullstacksolutions.com/guides/ranking-dropped/index.html) ## Don't want to become an expert in this? Send the symptom — get a flat-rate ticket and a plain-English plan within 12 hours. Start the Rescue