The panel won't load after install

What you'll learn: what to check when your panel isn't reachable in a browser.

If you can't open your panel at https://panel.yourbusiness.com, work through these checks in order. Most cases are one of the first three.

1. Has DNS spread yet?

Right after you point your panel domain at your server, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours for that change to be visible everywhere on the internet.

Test: From your computer, open a terminal and run:

ping panel.yourbusiness.com

If the IP shown is your server's IP, DNS is good. If it's something else (or unknown host), wait 10 minutes and try again.

2. Is your panel running?

SSH into your server and run:

systemctl status maxpanel

Look for a green "active (running)" line. If it says "inactive" or "failed":

systemctl restart maxpanel
systemctl status maxpanel

3. Did the SSL setup finish?

If your browser says "site can't be reached" but http:// works while https:// doesn't, your SSL certificate didn't install. Re-run:

certbot --nginx -d panel.yourbusiness.com

4. Is something blocking the port?

Make sure ports 80 and 443 are open in your VPS provider's firewall settings. Some providers (especially AWS EC2) block these by default — you have to allow them in the security group / firewall rules.

5. Is nginx happy?

systemctl status nginx
nginx -t

nginx -t checks for config errors. If it reports a problem, the message usually tells you exactly which line of which file is wrong.

Still stuck?

Take a screenshot of the browser error and copy the output of these two commands:

systemctl status maxpanel
systemctl status nginx

Contact support and paste both. We'll get you back online.

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Need help? Contact support.