When working with Magento, sometimes you might encounter the error “Magento Error 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable”
| 1 2 | Service Temporarily Unavailable The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. |
This error message is usually occured after performing some tasks like upgrading Magento patch, installing new Magento extensions or themes. In this Magento tutorial, we will learn how to fix this error.
Cause
We usually see this error message after installing Magento extension using Magento Connect or performing website backup. Sometimes, we also see this error after upgrading Magento version or components like theme/extensions.
In System > Magento Connect > Magento Connect Manager, if you check on this option, you will see the error after installing/upgrading/backup creation
This is because Magento has put your store to maintenance mode (learn how to put your store to maintenance mode and customize the Maintenance mode page)
Solution
1. Remove maintenance.flag file
The Maintenance.flag file that Magento created to put your store to maintenance mode will trigger this error message and you will not be able to access your Magento store if this file still exists.
What we need to do is open file Manager of your server (you can connect via FTP or using file manager application in hosting panel), then open Magento installation folder, search for Maintenance.flag file, rename or remove this file and your store will be accessible and functions normally.
2. Disable compiler
If removing maintenance.flag file doesn’t help, you can try disabling compiler of Magento. Go to System > Compilation > Disable compilation
Once compilation is disabled, you will see its status here:
Now remove your website to see if the error is gone.
Good luck!
