Now when most people think about surfing via a proxy, they are talking about doing it for privacy reasons.  Proxy sites can also be used for troubleshooting problems between yourself and the server your web site is hosted on.

Think of it as your chance to check your web site out as if you were across the country, or across the globe.  It lets you trick the server into thinking you are coming from another location, so you can see what somebody in a different location might see if they went to your web site.

Tom Troubleshoots via a Proxy

There are a number of different proxy web sites out there.  Here are a few examples:

• http://www.megaproxy.com/freesurf/
• http://www.proxify.com/

Now, why might somebody want to use a proxy site?  When it comes to web hosting, it is often used to see if a web site is really down or if you are having some sort of connection problem between yourself and the hosting server in question.  Let me explain further.Tom notices his web site isn’t coming up.  He goes to his favorite proxy site, and tries browsing from there, and it does come up.  This tells him that there is a problem between himself and the hosting server, but there is not a problem between other people and the hosting server.

Now, I would say this is as much of a troubleshooting solution as it is a troubleshooting tip. Oh boy, you know that you can’t see your web site but other people can.  That still isn’t fixing your problems, right?  Well, letting your web hosting support team know that you have tested it this way will save them time as they look into the problem for you.  It could be there is a problem with the connection down the line with your internet provider.  You might be blocked for some reason on the server side.  You might have accidently started to block yourself, even.

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