Is My Website Down? How to Check Before You Panic

You type your website address into the browser and it doesn't load. The first thought is usually: "Oh no. My site is down."

Maybe it is. But there are a few things worth checking before you start changing DNS records or restarting servers.

A website can fail for several reasons, and not all of them are actually on the website's side.

Start with another website

Open a site you know normally works.

If several sites are failing, your own connection may be the problem. If everything else loads normally and only your site is failing, keep checking.

Try another connection

If you're on Wi-Fi, try mobile data. Or ask someone on another connection to open the site.

This is a surprisingly useful test. A problem with your home network, DNS cache, VPN, firewall, or internet provider can make a perfectly healthy website look broken.

Try another device

Open the site on your phone or another computer.

If it works there, the problem may be local to the first device. If it fails everywhere, the website or its infrastructure becomes more likely to be the problem.

Look at the actual error

A browser message can give you a clue.

"Server not found" points you in a different direction from a server error or an HTTPS certificate warning.

You don't need to understand every technical detail. The important thing is to notice what kind of failure you're seeing.

Check whether the problem is external

The strongest simple test is to check the website from somewhere outside your own network.

If it fails from several independent connections, you have much better evidence that the website itself is having trouble.

Don't confuse an SSL problem with an outage

Your server can still be running while your HTTPS certificate has a problem.

If the certificate has expired or is otherwise invalid, visitors may see a security warning even though the web server is responding.

That's one reason website monitoring and SSL monitoring belong together, but they are not the same check.

The problem with checking manually

Manual checks are useful when you're troubleshooting. They are not a good monitoring system.

You might check your site at 9:00 AM, see that everything is fine, and then have an outage at 9:15 AM that lasts until lunch.

If you're the only person responsible for the website, there may be nobody else watching.

That's the gap an uptime monitor is meant to cover.

VeePulse can periodically check a website and email you when it detects downtime or when the site recovers. It also monitors SSL certificate expiry.