You’ve ordered your hosting, received your account details, but your new website or hosting account doesn’t seem to be working yet.
There are several perfectly normal reasons why this can happen with a new account. The quickest way to work out what’s going on is to start with your domain name.
First, visit your domain directly
Open a web browser such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
Click in the address bar at the very top of the browser and type your complete website address, for example:
https://www.example.test
Then press Enter.
Replace example.test with your actual domain name.
Make sure you’re visiting the website — not searching for it
This catches more people out than you might expect.
Typing your domain name into Google is not the same thing as visiting the domain directly.
A brand-new website may not be listed in Google yet, and an existing domain may still have old search results indexed.
You need to enter:
https://www.example.test
directly into your browser’s address bar.
Some browsers use the same box for web addresses and Google searches, which can make this slightly confusing. Including the full https://www. at the beginning helps make it clear that you want the browser to visit the website rather than search for it.
What do you see?
What happens next gives us a useful clue.
You see a 4UHosting page or your new website
Good — your domain is reaching the new hosting account.
You can move on to setting up your email addresses, uploading or installing your website, and using cPanel.
You still see your old website
Your domain may still be pointing to your previous hosting provider, or a recent DNS change may still be working its way around the internet.
If you’ve only recently changed your nameservers, this can be perfectly normal for a while.
See How Long Do DNS Changes Take? for more information.
You see a page from another hosting company
This usually means the domain is still pointing to your previous provider.
If the domain isn’t registered with 4UHosting, check that you’ve changed its nameservers to the ones shown in your Hosting Account Details email.
See How to Change Your Domain’s Nameservers.
You get a browser error
You might see a message such as:
- Server not found
- This site can’t be reached
- DNS address could not be found
- We can’t connect to the server
This usually points towards a domain or DNS issue rather than a problem with the website files themselves.
If your domain is registered with another provider, check that its nameservers have been changed to the ones supplied in your Hosting Account Details email.
If you registered the domain through 4UHosting and believe everything should already be active, contact us and we’ll check it for you.
Have the nameservers only just been changed?
DNS changes are not always visible everywhere immediately.
When a domain’s nameservers are changed, internet providers and DNS servers around the world may continue using previously cached information for a while.
This can produce some apparently strange results.
Your website might work on your phone but not your computer.
You might see the new site while somebody else still sees the old one.
It might even work using your phone’s mobile connection but show the old site when connected to your home Wi-Fi.
That doesn’t necessarily mean anything is broken. The two connections may simply be using different cached DNS information.
See How Long Do DNS Changes Take? for a more detailed explanation.
Once your domain is working, try cPanel
If your domain is reaching the new 4UHosting account, you can then check your cPanel login.
Visit:
https://www.example.test/cpanel
Replace example.test with your own domain name.
Use the cPanel username and password from your Hosting Account Details email.
Remember that your cPanel login is different from the email address and password you use to access your 4UHosting customer account.
If the website is reaching 4UHosting but /cpanel isn’t working, double-check the login information first. If you’re still unable to get in, open a support ticket and we’ll check it.
The domain works, but there’s no website
That’s usually much easier to explain.
A hosting account gives your website somewhere to live, but it doesn’t automatically create the website itself.
You may still need to:
- upload an existing website;
- install WordPress;
- migrate a website from another hosting provider; or
- have your web designer or developer upload it.
If you already have your website files, see How to Upload Your Website Using cPanel File Manager.
If you’re starting a WordPress website, see our WordPress guides instead.
The website works, but email doesn’t
Website and email services use the same domain but don’t necessarily fail together.
If you’ve just created a new hosting account, you’ll normally need to create your email addresses in cPanel before you can use them.
If you’re moving an existing domain from another provider, DNS changes may also temporarily affect where your email is delivered.
See our Email section for help creating email accounts, accessing webmail and configuring your devices.
Could your browser or internet connection be showing old information?
If the nameservers were changed recently, try viewing the website from another connection.
One particularly useful test is to open the site on your phone with Wi-Fi switched off, so that the phone uses its mobile data connection.
If the new site appears over mobile data but your computer still shows the old site through your home or office connection, DNS caching is the likely explanation.
You can also try a private/incognito browser window, although this mainly helps with browser caching rather than DNS caching.
Still not working?
If you’ve worked through the checks above and you’re still unsure what’s happening, don’t spend hours trying random fixes.
Open a support ticket and tell us:
- your domain name;
- what you see when you visit it directly;
- whether the domain is registered with 4UHosting or another registrar;
- whether you’ve recently changed its nameservers;
- any error message you’re seeing.
If possible, include a screenshot.
New hosting accounts sometimes involve several things coming together at once — domain registration, DNS, hosting, website files and email — and it isn’t always obvious which one is causing the problem.
Tell us what you’re seeing and we’ll help you work it out.