Why is my Squarespace website not working?

When you connect a custom domain, you add records that point it at the site, and you keep the address the platform gave you for editing. Both can load the same pages. Until the records are in place everywhere, and until a secure connection is issued for the domain, a visitor who types it can reach an error page, a browser warning or nothing at all. Your own network may already have the new answer, so the domain loads for you while a visitor on another network still gets the old one. Nothing inside the editor shows you which address a stranger reached.

• Open the address the platform gave you in a private window. Does the home page load?
• Open your custom domain in the same window. Does it load, show an error or show a warning?
• Type the domain with and without the www prefix. Do both land on one address?
• Open the domain on a phone on a mobile connection, not on the office Wi-Fi.
• Note whether the failure is the domain or the page before you edit either.

A Squarespace site can be reached through the address the platform gave you and through your own domain, and both usually show the same pages. Their paths differ, though. The platform address is already set up. The domain depends on records you added at a registrar or in the site's domain settings, on a secure certificate for that domain, and on every network's DNS answer catching up. Until all three agree, the two addresses can give the same person different results.

A domain that resolves to nothing shows an error from the browser, and the site never loads. A domain whose secure connection is not ready shows a warning before the page. A domain that sends www to one address and the bare name to another can bounce between them, which looks like a page that keeps reloading. A domain that still points at an older host shows the wrong content with no error at all.

Each one looks different, so note which you see before you change anything. The error is a records problem. The warning is a certificate that is not issued yet. The loop is a redirect between www and the bare name. The wrong content is a record that still points somewhere else. Write the one you saw next to the time you saw it.

The address the platform gave you passes every check you make inside the editor, because that is the address you are using. A passing preview says nothing about what a visitor on another network gets from the custom domain. The check that matters opens the domain itself, outside your own browser session, and reads what comes back. A simulated visitor does exactly that: it arrives at the public address, records the warning, error or loop, and shows the step where it stopped.

Renewing a domain, moving it to another registrar or editing a record can change what visitors reach, while your own editor keeps working. After each change, open the domain from a phone on a mobile connection, then run the same visitors through the home page and compare where each one stopped. Keep the list of addresses fixed between runs.