Windows and Linux

Website checks

These sit at the edge of networking, and they come up constantly in 'the site is broken' tickets.

Question	Command	What a good result looks like
See only the status code and headers	`curl -I https://example.com`	A status line such as 200 for success, 301 for a redirect, 403 for forbidden or 500 for a server error.
See the full connection detail	`curl -v https://example.com`	Shows the TLS handshake, the certificate details and the request and response headers.
Use the PowerShell version	`Invoke-WebRequest https://example.com`	Returns a StatusCode of 200 and the page content, or an error that names the failure.
Run real curl in Windows PowerShell 5.1	`curl.exe -I https://example.com`	The same output as curl on Linux. Plain curl is an alias for Invoke-WebRequest in that version of PowerShell.
See failed requests in the browser	Press F12, then open the Network tab	Failed requests show with their status codes. The Console tab lists JavaScript errors.
Rule out a stale page	Clear the site's cache and cookies in the browser settings, then reload	Often fixes a page that looks wrong or will not update.

Windows includes curl.exe, and Microsoft documents the PowerShell alias in curl on Windows.