Home / Guides
Guides
Plain-English help for the moment a website won't load: whether it's down or just you, what the error codes mean, and what to do when it's your own site.
Is it down, or just me? How to tell in under a minute
A site won't load. Here's the fast way to find out whether it's broken for everyone or something on your end, and what to do in each case.
Read the guide → Reference · 3 min readHTTP status codes in plain English
Every page a website sends comes with a three-digit number. Here's what the common ones mean, and which ones say a site is actually down.
Read the guide → Uptime · 2 min readWebsite uptime: what the percentages really mean
99.9% sounds close to perfect. It allows almost nine hours of downtime a year. Here's how uptime is measured and what the numbers translate to.
Read the guide → Access · 2 min readUsing a VPN when a site is down or blocked where you are
Sometimes a site is up everywhere except where you are. A VPN lets you test that, and sometimes get around it. Here's how it works and when not to bother.
Read the guide → For site owners · 3 min readYour website is down: a checklist for site owners
What to check, in what order, when it's your own site that won't load. Most outages come down to five causes, and you can rule each one out in minutes.
Read the guide →