How to Fix Uptime and Availability Issues

What the availability check tests

SiteCurl runs three availability checks when scanning your site:

1. HTTP status: Whether the homepage returns a 200 (success), a redirect (300-level), or an error (400/500-level)
2. Response time: The server’s Time to First Byte (TTFB), measured in milliseconds. Under 600ms is good, over 1.5 seconds is critical.
3. Redirect chain: How many redirects happen between the requested URL and the final page. Two or fewer is acceptable.

Why it matters

If your site returns an error status, visitors see nothing. If it takes 3 seconds to start loading, most visitors leave. If it chains through 4 redirects before reaching the page, that is 4 round trips of wasted time. Each of these issues directly reduces traffic and conversions.

Search engines also penalize slow and unreachable sites. Google measures server response time and will reduce crawl rate for slow sites.

How to fix it

Fix HTTP errors

If your homepage returns a 4xx or 5xx error:

• 500 Internal Server Error: Check your server logs for the root cause. Common issues: misconfigured .htaccess, database connection failure, application error.
• 502/503: Your server or application is down. Check that your web server and application processes are running.
• 403 Forbidden: Check file permissions and server access rules.

Speed up server response time

Target TTFB under 600ms:

• Enable server-side caching: Cache rendered pages so the server does not rebuild them for every request.
• Use a CDN: Serve pages from edge locations near your visitors.
• Optimize database queries: Slow queries are the most common cause of high TTFB. Add indexes, reduce query count, and cache results.
• Upgrade hosting: Shared hosting often cannot handle traffic spikes. Consider a VPS or dedicated server.

Reduce redirect chains

If your site chains through multiple redirects (e.g., http://example.com -> https://example.com -> https://www.example.com -> https://www.example.com/), consolidate them:

• Configure your server to redirect directly to the final URL in one hop
• Update DNS and server config to point to the canonical domain

How to verify the fix

Run a SiteCurl scan and check the uptime section. All three checks (HTTP status, response time, redirect chain) should pass.

Related checks

Availability works with HTTP/2 (faster protocol), compression (smaller responses), and cache headers (reduced server load). Fix all four for the best performance.

Start a free trial to monitor your site’s availability.