Reddit down: Entire site goes offline as users are told 'all of our servers are busy right now'

People heading to the website see just the alien from its logo, unable to get onto a cartoon computer – apparently because of a '503 error'

A Reddit mascot is shown at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California April 15, 2014 (REUTERS/Robert Galbraith )

Reddit appears to have broken, leaving one of the internet's biggest websites unavailable.

The site appears to have been hit by a 503 error, where the service is unavailable, but it isn't clear

"All of our servers are busy right now," the message reads. "Please try again in a minute."

Next to that message, the site shows a picture of the Alien from its logo, unable to use its computer apparently because a cat has pulled the plug out.

Previous outages have used the same message, which appears to be a generic page that shows whenever the service is unavailable.

When the site has gone down before, some people have found it accessible only when logging in. That has meant that it can be difficult to check for sure whether it is down, since sites that just contact the website to see if it is up will be able to see it.

But this time the error appears to be happening whether people are logged in or not. It doesn't appear to be affecting all users, and so is presumably limited to certain geographies.

Reddit's own status page claims that the site is working fine. But reports on other social networks said it wasn't possible to get on the site, and The Independent was unable to connect to it.