<b>Q: My site is "down" but the server is clearly running. Where do I even look?</b>

<b>Q: My site is "down" but the server is clearly running. Where do I even look?</b>

A: When the box is healthy but checks fail, the problem is almost always between the user and your server, not the server itself. Walk the path in order:

— DNS: is the domain resolving? An expired domain or a botched DNS change takes you down while the server hums along happily.
— TLS: did the certificate expire or fail to deploy? Browsers refuse the connection before any page loads.
— CDN/proxy: Cloudflare or your load balancer can return a 5xx while origin is fine.
— Then origin last.

This is why a good monitor reports the failure stage, not just "down." Knowing it failed at DNS resolution versus connection versus content tells you which team to wake. Configure your checks to log that detail, and outages get a lot less mysterious.

Got a question? Drop it in the comments.