Youtube is currently experiencing a major outage.
YouTube’s official Twitter channels have acknowledged the issue and are currently attempting to resolve it. At the time of writing this, no update has been given, and the platform is still down.
Video playback does not work. It is quite eerie.
As a website developer, it is always in the back of your mind that even the tiniest error in code can result in the dreaded Internal Server error. Usually on a small scale website, with only one person working on the site at any one time, it is normally easy enough to find the cause and apply a fix, to have the site up and running again in a short time. Despite this, it can cause stress and minutes can seem like hours while you are trying to troubleshoot the issue. Having the site up and running asap is paramount.
Now, in comparison, the size and scope of the YouTube platform is a whole different scenario. With the possibility of multiple developers all working at once on different sections of the site, troubleshooting an internal server error would be a whole different ball game. That is presuming it was human error in the code, There are a mountain of other possibilities for it going down, like hosting errors, spike in traffic, brute force attacks, etc
The error doesn’t seem to be one of the more common Error message seen in the past when YouTube has encountered bad service issues.
The site, Down Detector shows the extent of the current outages.
The object of this article is to show that even website’s with a large scale team of developers can go down for many reasons. It happens! The good news is that all issues are resolvable. If the worst should happen and your site is not recoverable, and you need to install a fresh version, from your website back up. Wait ! You do complete regular backups of your site, don’t you? We can not stress enough, that website back ups are a must. How often you need to do website backups will depend on how often your content is changing. At the very minimum, we recommend monthly backups. For sites that have constantly changing content, daily backups should be performed.
If you are having any issues with your site, contact us. If you would like someone to take care of your website updates and backups, sign up for one of our monthly maintenance packages.