Online Reservation System:
Software, database & hosting

Symptom

When you visit your website, you will see a white page with the error code 502 and the text "Bad Gateway".

Cause

A 502 error is very rare. The message comes from the frontend web server Nginx because it does not receive a response to its request to the backend web server Apache. It can have two different root causes:

a) If the message is displayed promptly after the page has been accessed:
The Apache web server failed for an unknown reason. A failure of the Apache web server indicates a serious, general server problem.

b) If the Web site displays the 502 error message after a long wait:
One of your PHP scripts that should deliver an output is corrupted and has returned no result to the web server.

Solution

a) The Bitpalace hosts are tested every 10 seconds by automatic tests of configuration files, system services and actual website requests by an internal and additionally an external test system. Programs with a lot of artificial intelligence are able to solve a large number of web server problems automatically within a maximum of three minutes. In the unlikely event of a failure of the web server, which overstrains the artificial intelligence, our support is informed within one minute via multiple communication channels and will act immediately to resolve the issue 24/7. Please be patient. The world does not collapse only because a website or an e-mail address is temporarily unavailable in this very rare case. Just enjoy the free minutes. You do not have to do anything. Depending on the case, the typical problem-solving time is approximately 20 to 120 minutes.

b) In the case of a PHP script error in a script of your webspace, you are responsible for the solution yourself. Use the error log of the web server. There you will usually find very specific references to script errors. In addition, check if your script is caught in infinite loops and if all the resources it uses can be reached (maybe it loads data from another website that is currently unreachable, and therefore cannot continue).

Overview of frequently asked questions