Medium8 Ways Your Website Can Return HTTP 200 But Still Be Broken | by Thesuperrepemail | Jul, 2026 | MediumSitemapOpen in appSign up<br>Sign in
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What Basic Website Monitoring Actually Checks<br>8 Ways Your Website Can Show Up But Not Be Working<br>1. Database Connection Error<br>2. Maintenance Mode Left On<br>3. SSL Certificate Expired — Site Showing Security Warning<br>4. A Specific Page is Broken While Homepage is Fine<br>5. Website Broken After a Plugin or Code Update<br>6. Website is Extremely Slow — Up But Unusable<br>7. Domain Got Blacklisted — Emails Going to Spam<br>8. robots.txt Accidentally Blocking Search Engines<br>Why This Matters Especially for Agencies Managing Multiple Websites<br>What a Complete Website Health Check Should Cover<br>A Quick Website Health Check You Can Do Right Now<br>The Bottom Line
8 Ways Your Website Can Return HTTP 200 But Still Be Broken
Thesuperrepemail
6 min read·<br>Just now
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By URLWatch.io | 2026–06–22 | 6 min read<br>Last year a client called me very upset.<br>He said his customers were complaining that his website was not working. Orders were not going through. People were leaving.<br>I checked my website monitoring tool immediately. It said the website was UP . Green light. No alerts. Everything fine.<br>So I opened the website myself.<br>The homepage loaded perfectly. But when I clicked on the checkout page — blank white screen. Nothing. Just white.<br>The uptime checker never sent a single alert. Because technically the website was responding. The server was running. HTTP 200 was coming back.<br>But the website was completely broken for anyone trying to actually use it.<br>This is one of the most common problems in website health monitoring — your uptime monitor shows green but your website is not working for real visitors.<br>Here is exactly why this happens and what to do about it.<br>What Basic Website Monitoring Actually Checks<br>When a basic uptime monitoring tool checks your website, it does one simple thing.<br>It sends a request to your URL and waits for a response.<br>If the server responds with HTTP 200 — it marks your site as UP and moves on.<br>That is it.<br>It does not read the page. It does not check what is on the page. It does not verify that your checkout works, your contact form submits, or your images are loading.<br>It just checks: did the server respond?<br>And a server can respond perfectly fine with HTTP 200 even when your website is showing nothing but errors to real visitors. This is the fundamental limitation of basic site monitoring .<br>8 Ways Your Website Can Show Up But Not Be Working<br>1. Database Connection Error<br>Your server is running fine. But your database has crashed or disconnected.<br>The result: your website loads but shows “Error establishing a database connection” or just a blank page. Your uptime monitor sees HTTP 200. Your visitors see an error.<br>This is one of the most common website health check failures for WordPress sites. A plugin update, a server resource limit, or a MySQL crash can cause this instantly — and basic site monitoring will never catch it.<br>2. Maintenance Mode Left On<br>You were doing some updates. You turned on maintenance mode. Then you forgot to turn it off.<br>Your website is technically running and the uptime checker shows green. But every visitor sees a “Site Under Maintenance” page.<br>This has happened to so many agencies. A developer makes a change at 11pm, enables maintenance mode, finishes the work, and goes to sleep forgetting to disable it. Next morning hundreds of visitors see maintenance mode. The site monitoring tool never alerted anyone.<br>3. SSL Certificate Expired — Site Showing Security Warning<br>Your server is up. Your website is loading. But your SSL certificate expired.<br>Now every visitor sees a big red warning: “Your connection is not private” . Most people close the tab immediately.<br>Basic uptime monitoring does not check your SSL certificate. It just checks if the server is responding — and the server responds perfectly fine with an expired certificate. This is why proper website health monitoring must include SSL checking as a separate check.<br>4. A Specific Page is Broken While Homepage is Fine<br>Most uptime checkers monitor only your homepage URL.<br>But what if your homepage is fine and your checkout page is broken? The site monitoring tool checks the homepage, sees HTTP 200, and reports everything is fine. Meanwhile your customers are hitting a broken checkout and going to your competitor.<br>For e-commerce websites this is a critical gap in website monitoring . Your homepage can load in 0.5 seconds while your checkout throws a 500 error on every click.<br>5. Website Broken After a Plugin or Code Update<br>You updated a WordPress plugin or pushed new code. Everything looks fine on the surface.<br>But something broke. Maybe a JavaScript file is not loading. Maybe two plugins are conflicting. Your uptime monitor sees HTTP 200 and stays green.<br>But your navigation menu has disappeared. Your forms are not submitting. Your images are...