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Is the site down or is it me?

When a site will not open, the question is always the same: has it fallen over, or is something wrong at my end? This page tries to open it from two different places, your device and the Cloudflare network. The comparison shows which of the two is more likely, which is not the same as being certain.

In plain words

DNS (Domain Name System): the directory that turns a site's name into the number of the server hosting it. If that is what fails to answer, the site looks unreachable even when it is perfectly fine. Timeout: when a request goes out and nothing comes back within the waiting time. Redirect: when one address automatically sends you to another, for instance from the version without www to the one with www.

What to do, depending on the result

If the site answers from outside but not from you, try these steps in this order, because they run from the most likely to the rarest.

  1. Open the site in a private browsing window. If it works there, the problem is a browser extension or some stored data: clear the site's cache.
  2. Try from your phone on mobile data, with Wi-Fi switched off. If it works, the problem is your home network rather than the device.
  3. Change DNS as a test: in the network settings, instead of the automatic one, put 1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9. If the site comes back, your provider's DNS was not resolving that name, which can be a fault or a block.
  4. Check whether you have an antivirus with web protection or a family filter switched on: they are the most frequent cause of a site that will not open on one computer only.
  5. If you are in an office or on a corporate network, there may be a block set by whoever runs the network, and in that case there is nothing to fix: you ask.

If instead the site answers from neither side, there is nothing to do at your end. It is only worth checking the address again, because a misspelt name gives exactly the same result as a site that has fallen over.

The limits of this check

The check asks for the site's front page, not the precise page you were looking at. It answers the question "does this site exist and answer", rather than verifying one deep address.

Some sites answer an automated request differently: some block it deliberately, some show a browser check. In those cases the result from outside can say it does not answer even though the site opens fine for a person, which is why the comparison with the test from your own device matters more than either result alone.

The test from your device, for its part, says whether the browser can reach the site, not whether the page looks right: it does not read the content, because browser security rules do not allow that between different sites, and rightly so.

Finally: the outside check starts from the Cloudflare network, not from somebody's home. If a site is unreachable only from one country or one provider, this page will not notice.