You open your website and get the annoying error message “Service Unavailable” or “HTTP Error 503”. Your website no longer works and only shows this error message.
Variations of the 503 error
There are several variations of the 503 error, so the error that appears on your screen can appear in different ways. However, almost every variation contains the code : 503 which means that you can recognize the error as a 503 error. So as soon as you see the text 503, you know for sure that this manual is the right one to solve the error as soon as possible!
Below I have written down some variations of the error. These can differ per device, browser or server.
- The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
- 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable
- 503 Service Unavailable
- HTTP Error 503
- HTTP Server Error 503
- Error 503 Service Unavailable
There could be several causes for this error in your website. In this article we will explain them all and show you how you can solve the 503 error easily and quickly!
- Find the error in your website through the log file
- Resolve error found
- Resource limit reached
- Website optimize-for-speed
- Video resolve 503 error
Check the log file
First you start by looking in your log file. Here the error messages from your website are logged and you can see what caused the problem and often also which file caused the 503 error.
Every hosting provider has a control panel like DirectAdmin or Cpanel . On this control panel you then log in and look for the php error log or the http error log. It may have a different name but often it is simply called error log.
In this log you will see all entries / lines with text where an error is located, on which line the error is located and from which file.
Example log
Mon Aug 22 14:11:07.895464 2018] [lsapi:error] [pid 99647:tid 139625036831264] [client 1.2.3.4:123123] [host 1.2.3.4] Backend fatal error: PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected end of file, expecting variable (T_VARIABLE) or ${ (T_DOLLAR_OPEN_CURLY_BRACES) or {$ (T_CURLY_OPEN)) in /home/username/domains/domain.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/index.php on line 2.
In this log line you can see that there is an error in the file /home/username/domains/domain.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/index.php on line number 2.
Fix the error found
Now that you know in which file and which line the error is located, go and find this file. You can often do this in the control panel of your hosting provider, or on the FTP of your web hosting package.
Often the error is found in a plugin of your website or a theme. This can be seen in the path of the file you saw in the error log.
In our example above you can see that the path contains the plugin name “WooCommerce”. In this case the error will most probably be in the WooCommerce plugin of WordPress.
Disable plugin or theme
Since fixing an error in a script is difficult if you haven’t built the plugin, I recommend you to first disable the plugin or theme within your website. This will make your website work again and then you can look for the right solution to the error in your plugin or theme so you can use it again.
How do I disable a plugin or theme?
You can disable them in several ways, but the easiest one is through the backend of your site. Here you can easily disable the plugin and it will not be used anymore by your website.
If your backend doesn’t work anymore, I advise you to log into the FTP and change the name of the folder of the plugin to another name.
In the example of the woocommerce plugin you change the folder to for example woocommerce-old after which the plugin will be disabled immediately.
Resource limit reached
It can also happen that you have simply reached the maximum capacity of your resources with your websites and your web hosting package has no computing power left. In that case, it may also show a 503 error message with the following text: “503 Service Unavailable error”.
To check this and rule it out, it is best to log into the control panel of your web hosting package. Here you will often find a page called “Resource usage” or something similar. Click on this page and you will often see graphs showing you how much CPU power, RAM memory and hard disk activity you are using.
Often when you reach the limit of your package, you will see an error message at the top of the page. You will then see how many times you have reached the package limit in the last 24 hours. As soon as you have seen this message you will know for sure that your package has either become too small and you need more processing power or that you need to optimize your website so that it becomes faster and uses less processing power.
Optimize website for speed
It is also possible that your website is so heavy and needs so much computing power that because of this the http 503 errors occur.
In this case you run into your resource limit and the server stops the processes of your website because there is no more processing power.
You can do 2 things in this case:
- Provide a faster server / or a higher web hosting package
- Or optimize your website for more speed / less processing power and higher google rankings
In the first case you should contact your hosting provider and see what is possible.
In the second case you can optimize your website yourself. By doing so you ensure that your website loads much faster, is built more efficiently and thus requires less processing power from the server.
You will therefore no longer get 503 errors, but also have a faster website and will probably also rank higher in Google because your TTFB (Time to first byte) is lower and Google will therefore sooner rank you higher in the search results than your slower competitor!