Until a few minutes ago, Steemit.com was not available and many of you probably saw the following error: 504 Gateway error.
While Steemit.com at that time couldn't be accessed, the blockchain was still alive and well. Only the server behind Steemit.com called api.steemit.com that communicates with the blockchain was not responsive.
However, this fact shouldn't prevent you from browsing and interacting with your favourite social-media platform as there is an alternative to Steemit.com - just as good, called: Steemitstage.com
What is steemitstage.com?
Steemitstage.com is maintained by Steemit Inc. as well and used as the last-stage testing environment for Steemit.com before deployment in production (on Steemit.com).
There is, of course, another testing environment before Steemitstage.com, which is used to test changes which are not yet safe for the general public or could break.
That means, using Steemitstage.com should be just as save as using Steemit.com.
With that said: be very careful when using 3rd party Steem websites. Not every site is free of danger and there were a few cases where people spun up copies of Steemit.com just to get your private-keys!
api.steemitstage.com
And if you have a program which relies on api.steemit.com to communicate with the blockchain, then fear not:
You can simply use api.steemitstage.com. But be aware of possible problems that could arise at any time due to the nature of code-updates.
I hope this post helped to clarify the recent errors and gave you a better understanding of how Steemit.com works and what you can do if it's down.
And don't forget: Never stop steemin'!
Making Steem Greater
Projects developed by 
| Smartsteem.com | Steem Chat-Wallet |
|---|---|
| Witness Essentials | Utopian.io Signup |
More about me
Do you share my vision for Steem? Let's work together to achieve it!
You can vote for me at https://steemit.com/~witnesses.
Or you can simply use steemconnect to vote for me or to set me as a proxy.
A big and sincere Thank you to all of those who support my efforts!