Can't visit my own website?

I am at a complete loss and very upset. For the last three days I have not been able to visit my website or log in to cpanel at all.

At first I just thought my site was down. But it turned out other people can still visit my site perfectly fine.

I am the only one who can't visit it.

I get this error when trying to go to it normally with firefox:

The connection has timed out
The server at shadowsmoon.com is taking too long to respond.

* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.
* If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.
* If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.


I looked online and thought maybe my IP had been banned by accident.

My host finally got in touch with me today but doesn't know what is wrong and says my IP is not banned.

I need some suggestions or clue to fix this or what the problem might be.

I can visit my site using a proxy.

I ran a traceroute thing but I don't understand any of it.


Thank you for any and all help you can give.

Sounds like a DNS issue to me. Whatever DNS server your network connection is using isn't resolving correctly. Other users and proxies are probably resolving it correctly on updated DNS entries.

Fixing this is easy. I'm not really a network guy, though. So, someone else should tell you how to check into this.

//in the meantime you should be able to access your hosting account using an ip address.

That doesn't always work very well when your site is on a shared server like hers is.

Steps to try (make sure you've disabled any proxies you may have been using before doing these) :
1. Close all browsers
2. Go to Start/Run
3. Type: ipconfig /flushdns
4. Click OK
5. Open a browser and try your website.

If that doesn't work:
1. Shut down your computer.
2. Shut down any router or modem (if you have them).
3. Power cycle up the modem first.
4. Power cycle up the router after the modem is cycled.
5. Boot your computer and try your site again.

If that doesn't work:
1. Close any browsers and add an entry to your hosts file using the following instructions.
2. Open notepad
3. Navigate to c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
4. In the open file dialog box select File Type *all files*
5. Click HOSTS and open it.
6. Underneath the entry 127.0.0.1 localhost add the following two entries
65.98.100.242 shadowsmoon.com
65.98.100.242 "www.shadowsmoon.com" (without the quotation marks)
7. Click File/Save (*note - do not click "Save As" - that will add a .txt extension which you don't want - be sure to click only File/Save or CTRL+S)
8. Open a browser and check your website.

If all else fails, those last instructions should work. It's a temporary fix, but should do the trick.

Your website is up and just fine, and 65.98.100.242 is the IP address of your shared hosting server. By adding it to your hosts file you'll be able to work around whatever the problem actually is and be able to view your site and access your cPanel.

<rant>ISP's drive me nuts some times. One would think that they would be educated enough to have you try all those things and not just tell you they don't know what the problem is. Idiots!</rant>

Thank you so much for the replies but sadly none of them worked

I followed all your instructions perfectly and still cant visit my site.

I tried just going to the servers IP too and that didn't work either

How about just simply clicking start, run, then typing cmd and click Ok, then type ping shadowsmoon.com. If it says Reply from 65.98.100.242, then that means that you are able to reach out and touch it, and resolve the domain name. Otherwise if it says Request timed out, then we'll go with it from there.

Ok I tried that and it said:

ping shadowsmoon.com [65.98.100.242] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 65.98.100.242:
packets: sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss).

What happens if you go to that same command prompt window, then type tracert 65.98.100.242?

That should produce lots of output, and hopefully it will give us an idea of exactly where you are getting dumped.

I don't really understand any of the info it gave me lol

Well you are definitely getting out of your house, but it stops at a server in New Jersey that must have a bad DNS cache of your site because that's the last working hop, or the next server in the route is down.

If this has only started happening in the last day or so, it will probably clear up by itself within a week or less. In the mean time, if your proxies are working, use them and try your site without them every few days.

Here's the contact info at the IP address where your trace stops if you want to try to contact them and see if they can figure it out.

Atno's proxy idea is a good one, you might try google translate since it is free and for the most part reliable.

I have this exact same problem. I've tried all your suggestions before but they hadn't worked. However the tracert solution shows a connection that works properly.

I was FINALLY able to fix the problem 5 seconds ago by reseting my router. I pressed the reset button for a minute when it was off and another minute when it was on. (just wanted to make sure I did it right )

Find the IP of your local computer at whatsmyip.org

Open a ticket with your host and have them unblock your IP. It sounds like you've been blocked for whatever reason.

I have the SAME EXACT PROBLEM!!! I just got ATT U - VERSE yesterday and suddenly TODAY I can't VISIT nor UPDATE my wesbite at all. I can't even go to my WEBHOSTS webpage. I can go every where else on the net except my website. How is the possible. Why is my ISP only blocking my web hosting service.. Is there an absolute solution to this problem. if so please let me know.

I don't think it is your ISP blocking you. It sounds like your hosting provider is blocking you somehow. Find the IP of your local computer at whatsmyip.org

Open a ticket with your host and have them unblock your IP.

I may have a solution for you. I was having the same problem up until a couple of hours ago. Last night I called GoDaddy and told them what was happening. They had me ping my website and see where the delay was as well. It turned out that my firewall was blocking my visits to my website. She told me that I could add my website as an exception to the block. But I couldn't find where to do it. I was running a free trial of AVG Internet Security at the time. I was puzzled because I had used AVG before with no problems, but I had been using 8.0 and my trial was 9.0. So I'm wondering how many of you are running any 9.0 versions of AVG. You may be able to find where to add the exception for the firewall. Right now I am using Kaspersky and I can see my website just fine. Hope this helps!