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Why has your hot water stopped?
Pick your system type and the symptom, tick anything you have already checked, and you are left with the causes that remain — ordered from most to least likely, with the part involved and the point where the job legally stops being yours.
This is orientation based on the typical causes of each symptom, not an inspection. Your manufacturer's instructions for your model always outrank anything you read here. Turn off the unit's circuit before checking anything electrical, and close the cold inlet valve where water is involved.
Why it is ordered this way
The order is not arbitrary: it runs from free and accessible to expensive and buried. It is the order a good technician works in, and it is the one that stops you replacing a system that needed an element.
Every cause is marked with whether you can check it yourself or whether it is already a trade job, and the ones with a part attached name it so you know what is being replaced. And every symptom ends with a line marked "This far": in Australia most of the repair is licensed work, and the honest thing is to say where that line falls rather than let you find out afterwards.