I Wasn’t Even Looking For a 404! What Does That Mean?

There’s nothing more  frustrating than when while you are surfing to your heart’s content, you hit a roadblock.  If it were a real roadblock, then it would be no problem, but this a numbered roadblock.  Error 404 Not Found.  Error 403 Forbidden.  If you are like most of us, when you see these you just take for granted something is wrong.  But what exactly do each of these codes mean? When you make a request, or a request is made to your server, it returns an HTTP status code in response.  This code gives info about the status of the request.  Whether there is an error or not, some type of code is returned.  If there are no issues, the code is not readily seen and the product you requested is returned.  If there is a problem, then you may see a number of different codes.  Codes in the 400 range are request errors while 500 codes relate to server errors.  So, when you see these codes, you’ll know where the issues may lie:  on your side or the server.  Here is a list of some of the most common codes.

400 Bad Request (bad syntax)

401 Unauthorized – The request requires user authentication.

403 Forbidden – The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated.

404 Not Found – The server has not found anything matching the request

410 Gone – The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known.

500 Internal Server Error – The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.

501 Not Implemented – The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request.

503 Service Unavailable – Your web server is unable to handle your HTTP request at the time.

550 Permission Denied – The server is stating the account you have currently logged in as does not have permission to perform the action you are attempting.

Image courtesy of techbu.com

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