What does this error code mean?
Error codes often frighten people new to the website business. Even very experienced developers can become alarmed when they encounter an error code. We hought we might demystify all the confusion and talk about some of the common codes one may encounter when trying to access a website.
The first thing to know is that error codes all have three digits. The first digit will be somewhere between 1 and 5 and that first digit is a giant clue.
100 series: Merely informational. Chances are excellent you will never encounter a code in this series.
200 series: Success. On the unlikely chance that you see one of these codes, it means that whatever you just did went according to plan.
300 series: Redirection. The most common of these is the 301 error, which, if you see it at all, you will probably only see it for a few seconds as this redirecting code is tell you that the site you are attempting to access has permanently moved, usually to another website to which you will be redirected in less time than it takes to read this sentence.
400 series: Client error. Bad news. The most common of these are the 401, which means you are not authorized to visit this website. Error 402 means a payment is required before you may proceed. The 400 series code you will see most often are 403 and 404, the former meaning that access is out and out denied because harm will come to you or your computer of you proceeded, and the latter meaning that the site you are trying to access is not found. If you ever come across code 418, you likely work deep in the bowels of the internet. 418 means "I'm a teapot." That is a fact. You see, the Internet Engineering Task force that invented all these codes are not lacking a sense of humor. Every year they release to like-minded people Requests for Comments. One of the responses was Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol. One of the corollaries to this protocol is a 418 error code which translates to: "Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the HTTP error code signifying I'm a teapot."
500 series: Server errors. Common examples are 502, whih means "bad gateway," which in turn means that one server received an incorrect or invalid response from another server. You might want to talk with your hosting company on that one if it persists. The other common code in this series is 504, which is telling you that the server got tired of waiting for the response of the website populating and had better things to do and so gave up. You can wait a minute and try it again, or you can give up on accessing that website, or you can do the right thing and contact the hosting company.
100 series: Merely informational. Chances are excellent you will never encounter a code in this series.
200 series: Success. On the unlikely chance that you see one of these codes, it means that whatever you just did went according to plan.
300 series: Redirection. The most common of these is the 301 error, which, if you see it at all, you will probably only see it for a few seconds as this redirecting code is tell you that the site you are attempting to access has permanently moved, usually to another website to which you will be redirected in less time than it takes to read this sentence.
400 series: Client error. Bad news. The most common of these are the 401, which means you are not authorized to visit this website. Error 402 means a payment is required before you may proceed. The 400 series code you will see most often are 403 and 404, the former meaning that access is out and out denied because harm will come to you or your computer of you proceeded, and the latter meaning that the site you are trying to access is not found. If you ever come across code 418, you likely work deep in the bowels of the internet. 418 means "I'm a teapot." That is a fact. You see, the Internet Engineering Task force that invented all these codes are not lacking a sense of humor. Every year they release to like-minded people Requests for Comments. One of the responses was Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol. One of the corollaries to this protocol is a 418 error code which translates to: "Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the HTTP error code signifying I'm a teapot."
500 series: Server errors. Common examples are 502, whih means "bad gateway," which in turn means that one server received an incorrect or invalid response from another server. You might want to talk with your hosting company on that one if it persists. The other common code in this series is 504, which is telling you that the server got tired of waiting for the response of the website populating and had better things to do and so gave up. You can wait a minute and try it again, or you can give up on accessing that website, or you can do the right thing and contact the hosting company.