Apache error

Error 401 Unauthorized

This error indicates that the person did not authenticate correctly.

Error 403 Forbidden

This error indicates that the server is not allowed to answer your request. It also indicates that the page you are looking for cannot be found.

Error 404 Not Found

This error occurs when the typed URL points to a non-existent file. This is often due to either a non-existent file or a wrong input of the address.

Error 500 Internal Server Error

First of all, check on the works page that there is not a global incident in progress that could impact your site. If there is no incident in progress, it is most likely a problem related to your site itself and its programming.

If you have a 500 error that appears on your site after putting a .htaccess file think to check first the syntax errors, and if you have a RewriteBase and that this one is de-commented.

This error may be related to Apache. Most of the time, it comes from a wrong directive in the .htaccess file of your website.

You can analyze the error.log file available in your hosting directory. To retrieve the absolute path of this file, use the phpinfo().

In order to ensure a good use of .htaccess files, we advise you to consult specialized sites, which you can find very easily with a search engine.

Possible causes of error 500

Our shared servers constantly monitor the integrity of the shared resources. These monitors are the guarantors of the quality of service provided because they prevent most abuses by ensuring that a site cannot use too many resources to the detriment of other hosted sites.

Several parameters are monitored by these monitors and can cause your script to stop PHP :

  • Too long a turnaround time : if your script PHP takes more than 30 seconds, then it runs the risk of being killed by the system. If you get a 500 error after a long page load time you are probably in this situation
  • Too much memory consumed : as soon as your script PHP consumes more than 128 MB of RAM, it may be stopped by the system. This usually results in an immediate 500 error, with no prior loading time.
  • Too much CPU consumed If your script uses the CPU too intensively, it may be killed by the system. If the 500 errors occur rather randomly, you may be in this situation.
  • Too many processes PHP simultaneous In shared hosting, we are obliged to limit the number of processes PHP launched simultaneously by a site; indeed, without this limitation, resources could quickly become saturated and all hosted sites impacted. A frequent case is the display of images through PHP (of the type image.php?crc=/images/monimg.jpg ): when the page is displayed, there are as many processes PHP launched than images. This is a bad way of programming and in any case incompatible with shared hosting.
  • A file .htaccess malformed: Check that yourURL Rewriting are correct, that you do not use a php_valueand that you have not inserted any unwanted characters using an unsuitable text editor (e.g. WordPad).

Remedy the 500 error

Of course, each case is unique and requires its own investigation. Below we give you some tips for verification:

  • If the error occurs after a long loading timeIf your script establishes connections to another web site, and that site is down, then your site may be down. For example, if your script establishes connections with another website, and that website is unavailable, then your website itself may be unavailable. So check for any external element: inclusion of a remote page/image, flows RSSmeters and guestbooks, etc.; identify the problematic resource and remove it from your page, or modify your programming to take into account the possibility of the resource being unavailable. A common case is also the call for API like Google or Yahoo. Don't forget that in shared hosting the IPs are shared, if other customers abuse these APIThe IP may be temporarily blocked and your site may be impacted.
  • Identify a possible programming problem. Check that you have not made an infinite loop, or code that could generate a programming problem. Go through your code line by line, commenting step by step on the programming blocks in order to identify the line(s) that cause problems. Check in particular that you do not no remote include HTTP and you only work with local disk paths.
  • Check your databases : Log in to your PhpMyAdmin and make sure that the size of your tables, the session table, statistics table, log table, etc., has not reached disproportionate proportions. Empty the affected tables and see this article to maintain your MySQL databases.
  • Check the features of your scripts PHP Does your site make image processingdoes it manage visit statisticsLive ChatDoes it send large numbers of e-mails, does it offer large files for download, and more generally, is it likely to generate actions that may consume many (too many) resources? In general, you should systematically disable any logging/stats/tracking system incompatible with a shared environment.

If despite everything, your site is too greedy and continues to generate errors, the most reasonable solution is to consider migrating the site to a private server or a dedicated server

Error 503 Service Unavailable

This error results in an unavailability of the service. It occurs most often when a server side overload occurs and in this case it can be temporary. It can also occur as a result of a misconfiguration of DNS pointing.

First of all, check on the works page that there is not a global incident in progress that could impact your site. If there is an incident in progress, there is no need to contact us, our team is already working on the problem.

If there is no incident, it is most likely a problem with your site itself when a site encounters Abnormally high traffic :

  • Legitimate traffic peak : in the case of a TV or radio broadcast, a buzz on social networks, etc.
  • DoS attack Denial of service attacks aim to saturate the site's connection and make it unavailable. If your site is the victim of such an attack, you may encounter this error.
  • Programming anomaly In some cases, your site may generate looping connections to itself (remote includes, etc.). Check your programming.

Whether it is legitimate or not, a large traffic peak cannot be absorbed by shared hosting, which remains a general public hosting mode for moderate use. If this need is recurrent, you should choose a private server or a dedicated server

In any case this error should not persist over time.

Updated on 17 July 2019

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