If you have enabled Cloudflare on your website, at times you might encounter some connection related problems. This article provides you information on the causes of these problems and how to troubleshoot them.
Cloudflare Error Pages
When Cloudflare displays error page in place of your own content, this is one of the most common indicators of a problem. These error pages will provide you complete information about why your website is not loading properly.
There are many situations when an error page is displayed by Cloudflare, they are mentioned below:
- 520 Web server returns an unknown error
- 521 web server is down
- Error 522 – Connection timed out
- 523 origin is unreachable
- 524 A timeout occurred
- 525 SSL handshake failed
- 526 invalid SSL certificate
In order to get complete information about these errors, you can visit : https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003011431-Troubleshooting-Cloudflare-5XX-errors
Site DNS Settings
In order to make Cloudflare work, the DNS settings of your website should be configured correctly to route the traffic through their network. When you enable Cloudflare through cPanel, this process automatically takes place.
- In case your website is experiencing connection issues and it has been less than 24 hours since you have enabled Cloudflare, you need to give it some time. It might take up to 24 hours for the DNS settings to propagate completely.
- If you get a blank page in your browser (also known as the white screen of death), this indicates an issue with your website’s web application or the web server. In this case, Cloudflare is not the cause.
Follow the steps mentioned below in order to verify that your website is correctly configured at the DNS level to work with the Cloudflare network:
1. Login to your account through SSH.
2. Enter the command mentioned below at the command prompt. Note : replace yourwebsitename.com with your website’s domain name:
dig www.yourwebsitename.com @127.0.0.1
- In case if dig receives a response of www.yoursebsitename.com.cdn.cloudflare.net, proceed to step 3.
- In case if dig does not receive this response, it means that your domain’s DNS is not correctly configured to work with Cloudflare. If it is indicated in cPanel that Cloudflare is enabled, you can get in touch with our support team to know further.
3. Enter the command mentioned below at the command prompt. Note : replace yourwebsitename.com with your website’s domain name:
dig www.yourwebsitename.com
- In case if dig receives a response of www.yoursebsitename.com.cdn.cloudflare.net, proceed to step 4.
- In case if dig does not receive this response, it means that your domain’s DNS is not correctly configured to work with Cloudflare. If it is indicated in cPanel that Cloudflare is enabled, you can get in touch with our support team to know further.
4. Use nslookup or dig on your local computer for quering www.yourwebsitename.com where yourwebsitename.com is your domain name.
- In case you receive a response of www.yoursebsitename.com.cdn.cloudflare.net, where yourwebsitename.com is your domain name, then the DNS settings of your domain are working perfectly along the entire connection path through your local computer to Cloudflare to the web server.
- In case you don’t receive this response, there is no problem with Cloudflare. Your local computer or network might have some configuration related issue that is preventing access to Cloudflare on your website.
