Website Won't Load? 12 Things to Check Before You Panic
Twelve checks, in order, from the 10-second fixes to the deeper diagnostics. Find the real cause instead of guessing.
A blank page or endless spinner is infuriating — but random fixes waste time. Work through these checks in order, from quickest to deepest. Stop as soon as the site loads.
The 10-second checks
1. Reload properly. Hit Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+R for a hard refresh that bypasses cache. 2. Check the URL. Typos, missing https://, and autocomplete mishaps cause more “outages” than you'd believe. 3. Try incognito. If it works in a private window, an extension or cached data is breaking it.
The 1-minute checks
4. Test another site. If nothing loads, it's your connection, not the site. 5. Switch networks. Wi-Fi to mobile data isolates ISP and router problems instantly. 6. Try another device. Phone vs. laptop tells you whether the fault follows you or the hardware. 7. Disable your VPN and ad-blocker temporarily — both are frequent silent breakers of websites.
The 5-minute checks
8. Clear browser cache and cookies for the site, or reset the browser. 9. Restart your router — unplug 30 seconds, plug back in, wait two minutes. 10. Change your DNS to 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1; DNS failures masquerade as dead websites constantly. 11. Check the site's status independently with our server-side checker — if our server can't reach it either, it's genuinely down and there's nothing to fix on your end. 12. Look at the HTTP status. Our checker shows the exact code: a 404 means the page is gone, a 503 means the server is overloaded — each points to a different cause.
When it's really down
If independent checks confirm an outage, stop troubleshooting your own setup — you'll only frustrate yourself. Check the service's official status page or social accounts, and wait. The vast majority of outages are resolved within a few hours.
Don't guess — test it. Our free checker tells you in seconds whether any website is up or down.
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