What do the HTTP status codes, such as 403, 404, 500, mean?

Web Hosting Basic knowledge

For every request from a webbrowser the server responds with a status code. If there was a error, you can get additional information about the error. You can find the most frequent error codes and a brief description in the list below.

HTTP Error 400 - Bad Request

The server can't process the request due to clientside errors.

HTTP Error 401 - Unauthorized

The 401 status code indicates that the HTTP request has not been applied because it lacks valid authentication credentials (usually username and password) for the target resource.

If the request included authentication credentials, the 401 response indicates that authorization has been refused for those credentials. Please check if your username and password are correct.

HTTP status 403 - Forbidden

This is a permissions issue. You often encounter this error when no index file (.htm, .html or .php) is present and the directory listing is off for a folder in the Web space (Line "Options -Indexes" in a .htaccess file).

Sometimes user authentication was provided, but the authenticated user is not permitted to view the content of the folder or file. Other times the operation is forbidden to all users. Sometimes this error occurs if there are too many connections at the same time. The easyname support team can explain you this issue in depth.

HTTP status 404 - Not Found

This error message is shown when a site or folder on a server are requested but cannot be found at the given URL. Please check your input.

Please note that this error can also appear if there is no start file (index.php or index.html).

HTTP status 406 - Not Acceptable

This error often occurs with the application firewall (mod_security). To protect against attacks on web applications, incoming and outgoing data traffic is checked for rule violations. If an action violates one of these rules, the corresponding IP address is temporarily blocked and the user receives the status message "406 - Not Acceptable".

The IP address is automatically unblocked after some time and access to the web application is then possible again. The time period depends on the severity of the violation.

Another possibility to make it accessible again is to deactivate the application firewall. It can be deactivated either for the entire web hosting or only for individual subdomains.

For the entire web hosting: Go to the menu item [Web Hosting] then to [Web Server Settings]. In the left-hand panel General, switch off "Mod Security" and click on the "Save" button.

This option causes new subdomains to be created without protection by the application firewall. For already existing subdomains, the protection must be removed manually.

For individual subdomains: Go to the menu item [Web Hosting] then [Subdomains]. Click on the blue pen symbol (Edit) next to the corresponding subdomain. Then click on the link Advanced Options. A menu will open in which you will see a tick next to "Activate application firewall". Click on the tick to deactivate the application firewall. Save your settings by clicking on the "Save" button.

Disabling the Application Firewall will make your web application or website more vulnerable to attackers. It is therefore not recommended to disable it.

HTTP Error 408 - Request Timeout

The server took longer than it's allocated timeout window. In this case the server terminates the connection.

HTTP status 429 - Too Many Requests

The HTTP 429 Too Many Requests response status code indicates the user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time.

A Retry-After header might be included to this response indicating how long to wait before making a new request. For example if more than 50 requests are received from the same IP address (cumulative hits) within the same second, our server will block that IP for the next 10 minutes as a security measure.

HTTP status 500 - Internal Server Error

This is a "catch all" status for unexpected errors. The server side error message is commonly caused by eg. misconfigured .htaccess files or PHP errors, which you you can check in the file php_error.log on your Webhost.

You can find the php_error.log file in the /log/ directory - this directory can be found on the same level as your /html/ directory

HTTP status 502 - Bad Gateway

This HTTP status code indicates, that under the specified URL there's no content to be displayed.

HTTP status 503 - Service unavailable

This means, that the server is currently unavailable or the server is overallocated. You can check the file php_error.log as described for the status code 500.

Should you not find helpful error messages in the logfile, please try changing the session_cache to the option filesystem, you can do this in the easyname control panel if you navigate to [Web Hosting] → [PHP settings] and click the link "Settings".

Please note that this change will take up to 15 minutes to take effect, so please try waiting 15 minutes before trying to call up your site and refresh it.

HTTP status 504 - Gateway timeout

This means, that the server has not responded within the specified time period.