Is a Site Down?

Gary North

July 28, 2012

I created a screencast video on July 21. I used Screenr. It allows you to create a screencast of up to five minutes at no cost. Address: www.screenr.com.

I embedded it into an article I wrote. No problem. It worked fine.

On Monday morning, July 23, my site's software automatically posted the article. The embedded video was dead. It linked to a page with a message: "this link is not responding." I went to the Screenr site. It took me to the same page: the site is not responding. That was at 7 a.m.

Was it really down? I went to this address:

www.isitdownrightnow.com
I searched for Screenr. The site told me that Screenr was up, but that I could not access it.

One of my subscribers had also not been able to access the video. He had alerted me.

So, I contacted other people. I asked if they could access the Screenr site.

Guess what? Some could. Some couldn't. At 10 a.m., it came back up.

I learned a major lesson. If a screencast-creation site lets you post your screencast video on its site, don't do it. Post it on YouTube. The likelihood of a YouTube going down is remote.

You can see the 3-minute video here:

//www.garynorth.com/public/9820.cfm