HTTP 503 / 508

¶HTTP 503

An HTTP 503 error can occur when a web hosting plan has used all the memory available to it in the selected product, or when a script times out.

¶HTTP 508

This error occurs when an individual web hosting plan has too many concurrent PHP threads running.

A web hosting plan can experience this error if it is under attack or if the hosting is not optimised enough to handle many simultaneous visits, for example from crawlers.

¶What you can do

You can monitor your web hosting’s current resource usage under the Website menu item in our Control Panel. There, under Resource Usage, you will find more details on what you can do to alleviate the problem.

Check the logs under Webserver logs in our Control Panel to see whether your site is under attack or if a crawler is causing the issue.

¶Optimise (with caching)

The problem can arise if poor plugins are installed, or if heavy SQL queries are running, causing PHP threads to wait.

Always ensure that cache modules and other features that can reduce your web hosting’s resource consumption are enabled and installed.

If you use WordPress, you can try to optimise WordPress via our WordPress tool found in the Control Panel.

¶Purchase additional resources

Often the cause of the error code is simply that your site is outgrowing its current hosting plan with us, and you can therefore upgrade to a larger plan with more resources to resolve the issue.

You can upgrade your product to a larger plan, with more PHP threads, thereby raising the resource ceiling. Upgrade your product through the Control Panel.

¶Restart PHP threads

A temporary solution to the problem can be to restart all PHP processes/threads on the web hosting. This is done under the Website menu item in our Control Panel.