If you are unable to open your website through a browser and the response is “Server not found”, “No connection to host”, or something similar, there are a few things you need to check in the following order:
1. Is the domain registered and not expired?
To have your website displaying your website files, first, you need to verify you have registered the domain name. The registration process is performed through a domain registrar. If you have not registered your domain name with a registrar, you won’t be able to see your website. You can see how to register a domain using our How to register a domain name? guide. If you have registered the domain, make sure it has not expired. You can see how to check the expiration date of a domain using our How to check the expiration date of my domain? guide.
2. Is the domain properly hosted?
Make sure your domain name is pointed to our servers. The NS settings that you need to configure for your domain have been displayed to you once your domain was added to the Domain Manager section of the Control Panel and you can view them from the same section by hovering your mouse over the “Status” icon for your domain. You can see how to host a domain using our How to host a domain you already own? guide.
If you have recently hosted your website on our servers, you will have to wait from 1 up to 72 hours for the DNS settings to propagate. This is necessary as many Internet Service Providers use DNS caching tools to save resources and depending on the ISP, the caching time may vary.
3. Did you clean your temporary Internet files?
You can try speeding up the DNS caching process by deleting your local temporary internet files as explained in the How to delete your temporary internet files guide.
4. How do other people see your website?
One of the best ways to verify if your website is available is by opening it through a proxy, which will allow you to view your website through a remote location. There are many free online proxy sites that you can use to see your website from a different country/computer.
5. Can you connect to our servers using Telnet?
One of the last things you can test is Telnet. It allows you to see if you have a direct connection through a given port to a hostname. You can see how to use Telnet using our How to use telnet? guide.
