There may be times when you experience your web site is not loading or you just can not access your site from your browser for any reason.

I usually go through some steps to troubleshoot the issue.

I am assuming that you have an internet connection and you can access other sites. If you can not, then you need to check your internet connectivity first.

Your first step here is to open a command session and check ipconfig. Your DNS suffix, IP address, and related info will be returned to you. If you receive no data, then you might have an issue with your router setup or with your ISP.

Check your access to the internet with ipconfig

Click Start, Run and type “command” in the input text field labeled Open.
Click OK.
At the prompt type: ipconfig
Hit Enter on your keyboard

Make sure your domain DNS is configured properly with whois

Check the domain name you are trying to troubleshoot with whois.
Whois checks that the domain name is registered and will show you where the DNS domain name servers are pointing to. Domain name servers should be pointing to the correct hosting provider.

If you are just starting a new website, you might have to wait for some time till your domain propagates through in internet. It can generally take up to 72 hours for all the servers around the world to update any changes in your DNS.

Registrar sites like godaddy.com provide whois lookup when you enter a domain name for searching. Just go to the registrar where you registered you domain name and do a lookup check there.

Try to access your site from a different locations

Go to a proxy network (proxy.org). Pick a proxy site from a different country, and enter your URL there. This can be a good indication as to whether the your site is loading fine.

Ping your site

One of the most popular utilities that checks if your site is responding. Ping will attempt to contact your host server, and will tell you how long it takes to get a response.

To ping your site:

Click Start, Run and type “command” in the imput text field labeled Open.
Click OK.
At the prompt type: ping yoursite.com (where yoursite.com is your actual domain).
Hit Enter on your keyboard. The results will show 4 attempts to send a packet to your site. If your site is reachable, it will display a reply on each line and ping statistics at the end.

Traceroute your site

Traceroute is another great utility that allows you to literally trace your connection to the host server.
It traces the route from your computer through your ISP till it reaches your requested hosting provider server.
It will also provide you the time it takes to reach each point needed for the connection from your local computer to you site’s server, and can give you a good indication, if there is any disruption along the way.

To traceroute your site:

Click Start, Run and type “command”.
Click OK.
At the prompt type: tracert yoursite.com (where yoursite.com is your actual domain).
Hit Enter on your keyboard.

Alternatively you can go to Network tools (http://network-tools.com) and check whois, ping, and tracerount more conveniently from the browser.

Spot check your site:

One of my favorite tools to check if your site is loading properly from different parts of the world.
I check with Alertra.com’s SpotCheck utility (http://www.alertra.com/spotcheck.php) which shows that the domain is loading fine from different parts of the world. It provides an easy way to check and gives your the time it takes to load as well.

If you know about any useful tool, let me know about it.

Regards.

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