Error 524 when Customer opens multiple tabs at the same time

On multiple occasions I get a Error 524 message when a customer tries to open multiple tabs at the same time. The site becomes unusable for about 15 minutes until it “regains” it self then it goes live again as if nothing happen.

The site is www.melinaandme.com

I’ve read through tons of forums here and elsewhere about this issue but can’t seem to come up with anything definitive.

I spoke to my go daddy hosting and they basically said my ip address isn’t configured correctly with Cloudflare and to change my name servers back to go daddy.

I’ve heard similar things from godaddy. As long as the IP address shown in the A record is pointing to your origin server (at godaddy?), the IP is fine. I can’t replicate an issue, opened multiple pages in multiple browser tabs, no issue. What are the steps to replicate? And, if you pause Cloudflare from the overview tab (lower right corner), does the site behave the same?

In any event, it’s a timeout error (we’re waiting for something from the host but the host is slow to deliver it and we give up after a period of time presenting the 524 error). Your host should have a record in their logs. Some other background here, Community Tip - Fixing Error 524: A timeout occurred.

Neither can I, though the site is quite slow to load in any case and that is irrespective of whether it is loading in one tab or in several. Furthermore, bypassing Cloudflare does not make things faster and the server is still equally slow to respond.

There’d be two scenarios most likely

  1. Your host rate limits Cloudflare as all requests come from the same IP address.
  2. There is a general issue with your server.

Considering I couldnt reproduce the 524s either but got also a poor performance when I bypassed Cloudflare I’d probably go with option #2.

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thank you for your quick response!

Yes, the A record is pointing to my hosting.

To recreate the issue:

  1. melinaandme.com
  2. open product listings in new tab for 10-15 products.

I suppose I should also make sure that the correct records are being proxied (orange cloud). 1 A record and 2 cname records.

Does that sound correct for a wordpress site with shared hosting?

Thank you for quick response!

To recreate the issue:

  1. melinaandme.com
  2. open product listing in new tab for 10-15 products.

I actually “triggered” the issue right now, so you may be able happening now.

I have the exact same issue with another website (Cloudflare and go daddy shared hosting) - so really I am leaning toward scenario number one.

I hadnt opened that many tabs earlier, but with twelve I did get two 524s.

Anyhow, Cloudflare wont be able to make your server faster and that seems to be the fundamental issue here. One thing I did notice is that your resources do not seem to get cached on Cloudflare, which will be most likely due to certain caching headers sent by your server which prevent Cloudflare from caching them (e.g. cache-control: private). That is something you will need to fix on your server. If you use the search here you should also find quite a few related threads.

Mind clarifying this? I do intend to use cloudflare for speed - however, when i try to open multiple tabs (to edit them as efficiently as possible - i.e. edit listing while another is being published) or if a customer tries to view multiple products at a time…we get the 524 error.

Are you saying I’m better off not using cloudflare at all because of how my server is configured?

I will look into the caching issue.

Thank you!

No, you will have the exact same issue without Cloudflare. The issue here simply is your server and/or your software configuration. That should be the primary focus.

Addressing the caching issue can partially improve performance (as those requests would not even hit your server in the first place, but be handled in their entirety by Cloudflare) but that would still not fix the main performance issue with your HTML documents.

You can pause Cloudflare at the bottom right on the Overview screen, wait until DNS has propagated and you connect directly to your server, and you will observe the very same issue. The site will be very slow to load. You might not run into actual time-outs as the browser will typically wait longer than Cloudflare (which is 100 seconds) but the issue will be there.

Thank you for clarifying. Are you able to point me in the right direction to get started on improving my server/software configuration? I know it’s pretty vague/broad, but I’m not sure where to start. I have purchased the near best option available for my server resources (shared hosting) and I am running woocommerce/wordpress - if that helps you at all to help me. Thank you!

That would be something slightly beyond the scope of this forum I am afraid. StackExchange and the like will be able to help better.

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