Some WordPress users face the problem of a page appearing with an error phrase in the following form (Error 522 (Connection timed out), i.e. connection timed out), when entering the main control panel of their WordPress site, which completely disrupts the site’s operation and prevents the site owner from controlling it.
In this article, we will discuss what the Error 522 problem is, review its causes, and offer step-by-step practical solutions so that you can solve it yourself if it occurs.
What is the problem of Error 522?
In fact, this problem is associated with sites that use the world-famous CDN service provider Cloudflare, which is considered one of the largest networks in the world and is widely used by companies, institutions, and blog owners.
Error 522 is an HTTP code that appears when an overload occurs on the web server being used, which takes a longer time for the server to respond to Cloud Flare. Therefore, Error 522 is a server problem.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a content delivery network (CDN), which acts as a third party between the original hosting servers and the web browser you are running on; It provides users with the necessary resources to make their websites, applications, and blogs secure and effective.
Founded in 2010, Cloudflare has provided a number of websites with services that help improve the responsiveness and security of their sites. Unlike traditional Internet transfer methods that request content directly from the server, a strong terminal network is used that provides you with content from the nearest available location to you.
The access request is first sent to Cloudflare, which in turn sends the request to the server over the Internet. The server then returns the information back via Cloudflare. Thus, you reach this content as quickly as possible, which speeds up and improves the performance of websites.
But at the same time, using this feature may result in several error messages, the most famous of which is error 522 (connection timed out). While Cloudflare is accelerating the exchange of data between the server and the website as a third party, communication may become impossible, leading to the appearance of a message (Connection timed out) and many Some people call this error (Cloud Flare Error).
You can read more about Cloud Flare in the following article: What is Cloud Flare? How do you link it to your website?
NBWe will explain in the following lines the reasons for the occurrence of error 552 and how to solve the problem, but if you want to get technical support one-on-one from a person specialized in programming WordPress, you can purchase Browse WordPress services on the website at prices starting from $5, to obtain the technical support service from A professional to help you solve your problem.
But if you want to solve this problem yourself, you can do so by completing the rest of the article.
Causes of error 522
We can consider that there are three main reasons that cause error 522. We will review them in our following paragraphs and explain how to solve them in detail. Follow along with us:
The first reason: a problem with the hosting server
We mentioned earlier that the 522 error problem is mainly a server problem, and the 522 message is a well-known form of HTTP error code expression. Where the first number 5 means a server error, and the second number 2 means that Cloud Flare encountered a problem trying to connect to the server over the Internet.
When overloading requests increase on the server, Cloudflare is unable to transfer data. This happens more often when using shared hosting , because the server is shared between more than one website. If traffic pressure occurs on one site, this will affect the other sites.
To solve this problem you can try one or all of these solutions:
1-If you are subscribed to shared hosting, you can upgrade your hosting to a higher plan. It is preferable to choose between VPS and Cloud Hosting. You can learn more about the types of hosting through this article :
2- You can use one of the cache plugins such as WP Super Cache , Cache Enabler , wp-rocket . As it temporarily stores location data; This reduces the load on the hosting server and speeds up data retrieval. Read more here about the importance of enabling cache in WordPress
3- You can enable the (Keep alive) feature on your site; It is a feature available on the server itself and can be controlled. Cloudflare takes advantage of this feature to increase website loading speed by saving image files, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code over the long term and loading them into the browser for easy retrieval later.
You can enable this feature by modifying the .htaccess file located in the file manager file from the main control panel as follows.
1- From the main control panel of the hosting used, from the Files section > choose File Manager.
2- Open the folder (public-html) and review its contents, then right-click on the file (.htaccess) and choose Edit.
3- Copy the following code at the bottom of the file, then press the Save button to save the changes to the file.
Note: You can follow the same steps on any type of control panel used.
Reason 2: Blocking the Cloudflare IP Addresses
This problem occurs if the hosting provider uses a firewall feature. As we mentioned previously, Cloudflare plays the role of an intermediary between the server, i.e. hosting, and your WordPress site. When the website is linked to Cloudflare, Cloudflare directly deals with traffic.
Regardless of where your site visitor is located, all visits to the hosting server are coming from the Cloudflare server. If the WordPress hosting used provides the feature of filtering or filtering IP addresses, this will lead to blocking Cloudflare requests and thus the error page (Error522) may appear.
To solve this problem you need to allow requests for Cloud Fire IP addresses from the hosting control panel being used. You can copy and paste the following code into the .htaccess file from your hosting control panel (following the same steps as previously) to do this.
Note: Replace the code 127.0.0.1 with the CloudFlare IP Address, and you can find it from here CloudFlare IP Address .
If you want to add more than one IP address, copy and paste the new IP at the beginning of a new line in the file, as shown in the following image, then press the Save button.
Third reason: Error 522 appears after activating a specific add-on:
If this problem appears after installing an add-on, it is possible that this add-on occupied a large amount of server resources, which led to a loss of communication between the server and Cloudflare and the appearance of an Error 522 page.
To solve this problem: Remove this plugin, and if you cannot access the WordPress home page, you can remove it through the FTP program.
If you have tried all of the previous solutions and they did not work, you must contact your site hosting technical support and consult them regarding this problem to help you solve it as quickly as possible. Almost all hosting companies provide technical support service seven days a week and 24 hours a day.
Finally, if technical support cannot solve your problem, you can contact Cloudflare technical support itself, and in this case you will need to share some information with them from the hosting control panel, such as (errors in login attempts, or transfers that took place between you and the hosting technical support team).
Conclusion
Thus, in this article, we have discussed error 522, explained its causes, and different ways to solve this problem if it occurs on your WordPress site. It’s very simple. Apply the above steps step by step and you will be able to solve this problem yourself and resume work on your site.
You must quickly deal with the problem of losing connection (Error 522) because its presence increases the bounce rate and may cause your site to delay appearing in search engines. Always remember that it is normal as a WordPress user to encounter problems and errors from time to time while your site is working. The important thing is that you do not worry and deal with these problems as quickly as possible. Share with us, have you ever encountered this problem on your site?
