maintenance mode - 503 Service Unavailable

[Ewgeniy]

Hi. When I enable maintenance mode, the main page of the website gives the response "503 Service Unavailable". This is very bad, the response should be with HTTP code 200 OK.
Need to fix this error as soon as possible. The site will be in maintenance mode for a long time until I fill it with products and customize it. During this time, a "503 Service Unavailable" response can cause the site to lose traffic.

Edited March 26, 2024 by Ewgeniy
error (see edit history)

[juanrojas]

open a ticket to your server discuss it with them

[Paul C]

19 hours ago, Ewgeniy said:

Hi. When I enable maintenance mode, the main page of the website gives the response "503 Service Unavailable". This is very bad, the response should be with HTTP code 200 OK.
Need to fix this error as soon as possible. The site will be in maintenance mode for a long time until I fill it with products and customize it. During this time, a "503 Service Unavailable" response can cause the site to lose traffic.

I disagree strongly. Why do you think that's bad? It is the most appropriate code for maintenance - it tells bots to basically "come back later" because the site is currently unavailable. If you respond with 200, then google will think the maintenance page content is the real content for the urls it visits on your site which is VERY, VERY bad.

[Ewgeniy]

On 3/26/2024 at 11:28 PM, juanrojas said:

open a ticket to your server discuss it with them

You've got it a little wrong. ) There is nothing wrong with the server, the page with the text about the maintenance opens. But the code "503 Service Unavailable" is given to the search engine.

[Ewgeniy]

7 hours ago, Paul C said:

I disagree strongly. Why do you think that's bad? It is the most appropriate code for maintenance - it tells bots to basically "come back later" because the site is currently unavailable. If you respond with 200, then google will think the maintenance page content is the real content for the urls it visits on your site which is VERY, VERY bad.

Most likely you are right, but webmaster Yandex scares with terrible consequences if the code 503 is given. ))

[Paul C]

14 hours ago, Ewgeniy said:

Most likely you are right, but webmaster Yandex scares with terrible consequences if the code 503 is given. ))

It's only an SEO issue if it returns that permanently. Yandex doesn't know your planned maintenance, so warns you just in case it's an unintentional event/error

From the RFC
 

Quote

10.5.4 503 Service Unavailable The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. If known, the length of the delay MAY be indicated in a Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client SHOULD handle the response as it would for a 500 response.

Note: The existence of the 503 status code does not imply that a server must use it when becoming overloaded. Some servers may wish to simply refuse the connection.

 

Edited March 28, 2024 by Paul C (see edit history)

[Ewgeniy]

37 minutes ago, Paul C said:

It's only an SEO issue if it returns that permanently. Yandex doesn't know your planned maintenance, so warns you just in case it's an unintentional event/error

Thank you! You've reassured me.