Website Down? Here's How to Troubleshoot Step by Step
When a website stops loading, random trial-and-error wastes time. A fixed troubleshooting order is faster because it narrows the fault domain step by step.
1. Confirm Whether the Outage Is Global
Use IsItDown first. If the site is globally unavailable, stop there. If the checker says it is healthy, continue with local troubleshooting. This pattern is useful for everyday checks on services like Instagram or Spotify, where local app issues are common but global outages also happen.
2. Test Another Browser Session
Private browsing disables most extensions and removes stale session state. If the site works in incognito but not in your normal browser, you have already narrowed the issue significantly.
3. Clear Browser Data
Broken cookies, cached assets, and stored service-worker state can all create false "site is down" symptoms. Clearing site data is often faster than deeper debugging when the problem is isolated to one browser.
4. Flush DNS
If the site recently moved infrastructure or your resolver is stale, DNS cache can keep you pointed at a dead target. This is one of the most common fixes for sites that fail on one machine but not another. Our DNS content hub covers the details.
5. Switch Networks
Try mobile data, a VPN, or another Wi-Fi network. This isolates ISP-level routing problems, DNS filtering, and firewall rules quickly.
6. Run Terminal Diagnostics
Use curl, traceroute, and nslookup to see whether the request is failing at the HTTP layer, the path layer, or the resolver layer.
7. Check for Platform-Wide Reports
If the target is a consumer platform, compare it with a known status page like Discord or Instagram. When multiple people report the same issue at the same time, you are likely looking at a service-side incident rather than a device-side issue.
8. Review Security Tools
VPNs, privacy filters, antivirus software, and corporate proxies frequently break requests in ways that look like application downtime. Disable them briefly to test, then re-enable and refine the offending rule.
9. Accept the Remaining Edge Cases
Some services block geographies, IP ranges, or user agents during mitigation events. If everything looks fine externally but only your path fails, this may be a selective blocking problem rather than a full outage.
Work the Checklist in Order
The reason this process works is that it moves from the cheapest, broadest checks to the most specific. Do not jump straight to complex diagnostics before you know whether the site is even down for other users.
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