Error 504 Gateway Timeout, what is it and how to fix it?

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Does your browser show the message “HTTP Error 504” when trying to access your website? Have you come across a screen with a error code 504?

Don’t worry, here we explain what may be causing this error on our website and all the ways to fix it.

What does the 504 error mean?

When a visitor enters our website, they make a request via http to our server, which responds by sending the desired content in the form of hypertext.

This hypertext is interpreted by the browser (Chrome, Firefox…) and displays the page.

The error 504 is caused when our server takes an excessive amount of time to process a request.

This is normally due to a failure in the server communication process, which will return an error screen with a code 504 or a Gateway Timeout Error.

Causes of the 504 error

The 504 error message appears when an intermediate server between our website and the client’s browser, or a network interface, cannot respond to requests from our visitors’ browsers.

These systems transmit communication as links in a chain in such a way that if one stops responding the failure affects the other systems.

There are several causes that can cause failures in these systems. When our local network or our router is overloaded It is common for this error to occur, which will not be limited only when accessing a specific website, but will happen when trying to access any website.

A wrong configuration in the proxy both client side and server side can also cause this error to appear.

You have to look at whether the problem only affects our server or also affects other servers of our provider.

If it affects more sites, it is possible that the error is caused by the provider and we will rule out the above causes.

Fix 504 error

If your website is experiencing the error 504 It is necessary that you get down to work as soon as possible, since the inactivity that this error causes on your site can cause you to lose traffic Web or that you cannot access tools that you may need at a given time.

There are several solutions that we can try to solve our problem with the 504 error.

In the event that you use a proxy for your website it is recommended that increase resourcessince it is very likely that this is the problem that is causing the error, because if your traffic increases or has spikes, it may run out of resources.

If you use a proxy too it is recommended that you configure it againsince the problem can be caused by an incorrect configuration of the file nginx.conf.

Check the plugin, the version and if you use WordPressbecause the lack of update of any of them, an incompatibility or a failure in the database can cause this 504 error.

It is advisable have only the necessary plugins so as not to consume too many resources.

Although a more common error than the 504 error would be the , or the 500 error, so I leave you a post on how to .

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Founder of SEO Empresa, in the online world since 1998 and involved in the hosting sector since 2007.