Website homepage 404 error but another page is fine

[parnelandr]

I'm hoping someone can help me.

I have an issue where my website at https://englishdev.chat is responding with a 404 error. It wasn't working for a couple of days then I managed to get it to work yesterday and now it's back to 404.

My domain is hosted on namecheap and I believe this is all done correctly as another page (a landing page) is showing at https://englishdev.chat/referrals

Looking through other possible issues on the website:

Tools > Domains & URLs > Language settings

Page settings > Language

General Page Settings (Page name and slug)

I would appreciate any suggestions about how I could troubleshoot this issue.

Many thanks,

Andrew

[parnelandr]

This issue is still persisting for me. I've had to clone my website 4 times now as the clone fix lasts for a week or so.

[parnelandr]

Just noting that the clone of the clone lasted 3 days this time.

[Jnix284]

@parnelandr thanks for the update - you shouldn't have to clone, you can just unpublish the existing page and then republish it directly.

Someone else reported their site was down this morning and it came back up on it's own, I'm hoping this is a sign that the developers are making progress on the issue.

[parnelandr]

@Tideas and @Jnix284 the clone solution did work. It does feel like a lazy and unsatisfactory solution as clearly some configuration of the original page was stopping it from working.

Step-by-step it looks like this:

1. Clone the page that's not working

2. Unpublish the page that's not working

3. Rename the slug of the page that's not working to something like 'old'.

4. Remove temporary slug of cloned page

5. Publish the cloned homepage.

[Jnix284]

@parnelandr I'm glad it worked, and completely agree it's not ideal. I reached out to someone at HubSpot to see if there's something else causing this issue - because they're week of rest is next week, I don't think we'll have an answer before July 8th.

[madbrain]

thanks for the solution

[Jnix284]

Hi @parnelandr it looks like you've covered most of the common issues with a home page not displaying, from what I can tell - either the language setting was changed after connecting the DNS or another change was made to the website URL that hasn't propogated to the server.

You can try this trick to reset the server cache - if that doesn't work, check back in 24-48 hours to see if the 404 error is resolved. 

Because other pages are working, there is no issue with the DNS configuration and I don't recommend disconnecting or it could cause other delays.

[parnelandr]

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for your reply. I'm pretty sure you are correct and it may be a waiting game for me.

I did see this as a fix on another solution however following the directions exactly I do not have the tab for templates as mentioned. 

Has this been moved since the page you linked was published?

Cheers,

Andrew

[Jnix284]

Hi @parnelandr I apologize, I missed that you tagged your post Free - editing the head HTML is a feature of a paid subscription, so the only option will be to wait it out and see if the server cache resets on its own in the next 24-48 hours.

[parnelandr]

Hi @Jnix284,

Thanks for that. I'll accept solution based on the assumption it will rectify itself.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Andrew

[Jnix284]

@parnelandr no worries at all, if it doesn't resolve itself, please tag me in this thread and we can look at other possibilities

[parnelandr]

Hi @Jnix284,

Unfortunately, this is still not working. 

Are there some other things I could check/do?

Many thanks,

Andrew

[Tideas · Accepted solution]

I used the workaround here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Blog-Website-Page-Publishing/My-page-returns-an-incomprehensible-40...

workred for me

[parnelandr]

Was this a permanent fix for you? I have the same issue with the cloned page one week later.

[Jnix284]

@parnelandr this is only a temporary fix. You shouldn't need to clone the page, but if you unpublish the page and then publish it again, it will force the server to update.

I have an open ticket with HubSpot Support and have added a link to this thread with your website so they can investigate the issue further - yours was one of the first to appear in the community and since it's happened again, hopefully that will help them find the cause of the issue sooner to implement a permanent fix.

[Jnix284]

@Tideas the reason this workaround is successful is because it pushes new content to the server and forces the changes through. @parnelandr it's worth trying to see if it will work for you.

please keep me posted if it does or doesn't work - and if it does return to 404 error so we can escalate this to HubSpot's technical support.

[Tideas]

So, it's not working again. Seems like it's only a temp fix. 

[Jnix284]

@Tideas if you'll add your URL to this thread, I've flagged it as recurring in the ticket with HubSpot Support. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this, because it's impacting multiple accounts I'm hopeful they will be able to identify the cause of the issue and get a permanent fix rolled out pretty quickly - with last week being the Global Week of Rest, there was limited developer/engineering support so it took a while to get it to them, but I imagine we'll hear something back pretty quickly Monday.

[Tideas]

Website is chachabackpackers.com

[KH33]

@Tideas How'd you get yours to resolve? looks like your main URL is working.