My website is hosted on BlueHost, and I use Cloudflare in front of it as the CDN server. But one day, when I browse my WordPress website admin page, it shows the 520 error page. The error message is Error 520 Web server is returning an unknown error, this shows the website server does not respond for a long time so that Cloudflare can not retrieve the webpage.
1. How To Fix WordPress WebSite 520 Error.
After investigating, I finally find a method to resolve this issue. The reason for this issue is because the webserver does not have enough memory or disk space to run a process ( such as a website backup process ), so the process runs for a long time. You can follow the below steps to fix this error.
- Connect to BlueHost SFTP ( secure FTP ) server with root user.
- Download BlueHost backup files that occupy big disk space to your local machine, then remove them from the webserver to free up more disk spaces.
- Ask BlueHost online support to increase memory size for your web server and restart it.
2. Connect To BlueHost FTP Server With Root User.
- Set BlueHost root user’s password if you forget it, you can read the article BlueHost Web Hosting Help Password Reset. Or for simplicity, you can follow the below steps.
- Login to your BlueHost Cpanel website with your account.
- Then click hosting —> performance —> access management menu item, then click Root tab on the right side, then you can change the root user password there. The root user can log in BlueHost SFTP server.
- Now you can connect to the BlueHost SFTP server using FTP clients such as the FileZilla client.
- Open FileZilla client and click File —> Site Manager… menu item at its top menu bar.
- Add a new FTP server site in the left panel, then select SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol in the right panel Protocol drop down list. Input FTP server IP address and port number, select Normal in Logon Type drop-down list. Input root in User input text box and input root user’s password which you just specify in step 3.
- Now click Connect button to connect to the SFTP server, click the OK button in the following popup dialog, after that you will see the web server root folder and its content listed in the FileZilla client.
3. Download BlueHost Backup Files And Remove It From Web Server To Free Up Disk Space.
3.1 Check Web Site Disk Space Usage In BlueHost Server.
- First, you should make sure whether your web server disk space is full or not follow the below steps.
- Login to your BlueHost manager website.
- Then click hosting —> performance —> disk management menu item, now you can see the disk space usage in the right panel. If the disk space usage is bigger than 80%, then it needs to clean up.
3.2 Download BlueHost WebSite Backup Files.
- First, connect to your BlueHost web server using FTP client with root user as above.
- Then go to directory /backup/cpbackup/daily on the server-side, your website backup files are all saved in it. If you choose daily backup, then the backup file is saved in /backup/cpbackup/daily folder, if you choose weekly backup, then the backup file is saved in /backup/cpbackup/weekly folder, and so on.
- Open a backup file folder, you can find a .gz file in it. This file is just the website backup file, right-click the file and click Download menu item to download it to the local machine, after download you can right-click it and click Delete menu item to remove it from the webserver to free up disk space.
4. Ask BlueHost Online Support To Increase Web Server Memory Size.
- Web server memory size is very important for web server execution performance. So when your web server does not respond for a long time, it is usually because the memory is not enough, at this time you should ask your BlueHost online support to increase the memory size in a configuration file. This is the easiest way to resolve such an issue.