6 Easy Ways to Fix HTTP Error 503 Service Unavailable

Suppose that you click on a link that comes on the very first position of a search engine after typing your queries in the search bar or browse a website by typing its URL. You see a blank screen with an error message on your device instead of the website you searched for or clicked the link. It happens when the server does not respond to your request. The error or error code is 503. 

503 Error Code – What Is It and What Are Its Causes and Variations? 

The 503 error Code means the website or web page is unavailable at the moment and you cannot access it. It is as the server is not ready to respond to your request due to heavy traffic. Further, the server could be under maintenance or has some technical glitches. It is a server side error. And as a website owner or user, you need to resolve the issue to access the website or web pages. 

Server communication problems, sudden increase in website traffic, resource usage exhaustion, DNS issues, theme/plugin incompatibility, and DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks are some common causes of 503 error code. This error code could appear with its variations as follows:

• HTTP Error 503
• 503 Service Unavailable
• 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable 
• Error 503 Service Unavailable
• HTTPS Error 503
• HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable
• HTTP Server Error 503

Examine resource usage

• Check the usage of resources, such as CPU, RAM, website inodes, entry processes, and I/O. It will assist you to know whether the issue relates to limited resources. 
• Monitor the traffic to your website. 
• Use a troubleshoot feature, for example one of Hostinger, to check the usage of resources. It will enable you to:

1. Find what causes the issue.
2. Delete.lg and temporary files automatically.  
3. Increase your disk space for manual file and folder cleaning up. 
4. Get an option to upgrade your hosting plan 

Reset firewall 

Step 1: Go to the admin panel 

Step 2: Scroll down the options and choose the VPS Settings option. 

Step 3: Tap Reset Firewall. 

Note – Keep in mind these steps may not work for you if you have hosted your website somewhere instead of Hostinger. Follow your server-specific steps to reset the firewall. 

Stop running many processes 

Step 1: Stop running processes to make your website become available. For this, you can use a kill command if you are a VPS hosting user. 

Step 2: Go to the Hosting Control Panel > Resource Page > Stop Running Processes > Stop if you are a shared hosting user. 

Examine the server logs and fix the code 

Step 1: Access hPanel.

Step 2: Move to Advanced.

Step 3: Choose PHP Configuration. 

Step 4: Switch to the PHP Options tab. 

Step 5: Check the box against the logErrors option. 

Step 6: To save the changes, scroll down.

Step 7: Move to the public_html directory and open the folder names wp_content. 

Step 8: See the error log file as the error occurs. 

Step 9: In the wp-config.php file, add the WP_DEBUG PHP constant to enable error logging. 

Note – These steps can vary as per your hosting service provider.  

Restart the networking equipment and the server

Step 1: Go to the VPS information option.

Step 2: Choose and tap the Reboot VPS option.

Note – These steps may not be useful for you based on your hosting service provider. 

Examine your DNS

To flush DNS on your Windows PC:

Step 1: Type cmd in the search box, which is around the Windows icon. After that, tap on the most suitable option to open the command prompt. 

Step 2: Type the command, ipconfig/flushdns, in the command prompt window. 

To flush DNS on macOS:  

Step 1: Press the F4 key to open Terminal. 

Step 2: Run the command – sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

Apart from the ways mentioned above, you can apply other CMS-specific ways/methods to sort out 503 Error Code. For example you can temporarily deactivate your plugins and themes if you have a WordPress website. 

Note – The write-up has around 7% plagiarism due to the copy paste job for command prompts.