I'm receiving the message "We were unable to load Disqus."

Check our status page for updates on system-wide issues.

Whenever Disqus is loaded on a page for the first time, our servers check the URL on which Disqus is loaded (and the disqus_url configuration variable if it is set) to make sure it's valid and meets certain criteria. When this fails, we show the message “We were unable to load Disqus. ...”

There are several reasons why you may be prompted with this message:

Your shortname is missing or incorrect

Disqus won't load if you haven't yet registered a forum shortname or if the shortname you have entered is incorrect. We suggest double-checking the disqus_shortname variable in your code, or the settings page for your respective platform. 

Disqus is being loaded on a different domain than you registered

By default Disqus is only allowed to load on the domain specified when you originally registered. This is enforced via the Trusted Domains setting. You can add, remove, or change trusted domains at the Disqus admin > Settings > Advanced page.

Recent webhost or domain name change

Allow 48 hours for your new DNS settings to propagate when switching hosts or domains. Even though your site's content is visible, our servers can't connect to your pages in the meantime.

Timeout

Our servers much reach your site within ten seconds.

HTTP status error codes, e.g., 404 Not Found

HTTP status error codes like 404 Not found and 503 Service unavailable can be returned to our servers by your pages even when your page's contents are visible.

Try contacting your host and let them know the status code your pages are returning. You can check header status codes for any page at the WebConfs Header Status Code Checker Tool.

Your page URL or title contains non-ASCII characters

For a URL to verify, it cannot contain non-ASCII "special" characters (e.g., ñ, å, š) which are usually exclusive to one or more languages. Full list of supported ASCII characters.

To fix this, set the disqus_url or disqus_title configuration variable (whichever is appropriate) and make sure to convert non-ASCII characters to ASCII characters in the variable (e.g., å to a, š to s). This will allow your site's visitors to see the proper non-ASCII version and our system can load a thread for the page.

Incorrectly-formatted JavaScript configuration variables

• disqus_title cannot be longer than 200 characters.

• disqus_url cannot contain spaces.

• disqus_url must use an absolute URL; relative URLs won’t work. E.g., 
  Good — absolute URL: var disqus_url = 'http://example.com/article/1/'; 
  Bad — relative URL: var disqus_url = '/article/1/';

Further assistance

If you cannot find your answer, you can contact our support team.