503 Service Unavailable, NOT blocked by Akamai

  • Resolved rob66bnu

    (@rob66bnu)


    6 years, 6 months ago

    Getting “Error connecting to MailChimp: 503 Service Unavailable”. Log file shows that interaction with MailChimp service was fine until 2 days ago.

    Updated plugins to latest versions (MailChimp for WordPress 4.2.4, MailChimp User Sync 1.7.5), but 503 error continues.

    Platform is WP version 4.9.8, PHP 5.6.3, Curl 7.45.0, hosted by GoDaddy as Managed WordPress site.

    Following the guidance at kb.mc4wp.com/solving-connectivity-issues, specifically the Advanced section at the end, I have connected to my server via SSH and run curl -v https://us1.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/?apikey=test with the appropriate values. This returns successfully, no errors, and reveals all of my MailChimp account information. The word Akamai doesn’t appear anywhere in the response.

    What else could be causing this error?

    FYI, my staging site, which has the same software versions, has continued interacting successfully with MailChimp throughout. It synchronizes with a different list (and API key) owned by the same Mailchimp account.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Lap

    (@lapzor)

    Hi,

    What hosting provider are you using?

    We found that with some particular hosting provider the outbound connections made by cURL are routed over a different IP when you SSH into the server then when you let Apache make the call via cURL. Although their support department has never been able to confirm this, we were able to confirm this by looking in the API log in the MailChimp .com account to see the source IP for the call in different situations.

    If you go to MailChimp .com account settings where you generte the API keys you can see the last 10 calls. There you may see the call you did from SSH comes from a different IP than the calls made earlier before the IP was blocked.

    Hope that helps. If you have any questions, please let us know!

    Thread Starter rob66bnu

    (@rob66bnu)

    Thanks for your help. My host provider is GoDaddy.

    Looking at my MailChimp.com Account > Extras > API keys page, I see my SSH curl call from yesterday with Source IP 45.40… followed by a series of mc4wp calls from this morning with source 72.167…144. All appear to have been handled successfull (Result = check, Throttled = nope, Response = n/a).

    In WordPress, the mc4wp General Settings page is still showing 503 Service Unavailable message and Status = Not Connected, BUT my list is now showing correctly in the MailChimp Account section at the bottom (it wasn’t before) AND the MailChimp User Sync page is now correctly populated with the list name and additional fields (these were not available before).

    I made a trivial change (in the bio info field, which is NOT passed to MC) to one user and the mc4wp Debug Log reported “Sync > Successfully updated user 4 …”. In the MailChimp.com Account > Extras > API keys page, I see two new mc4wp calls from 72.167…126 with corresponding timestamp.

    Next I changed the same user’s first name (a field which IS passed to MC) and saved it. That change was about an hour ago but has not been logged in the mc4wp debug log, nor are there any new entries in the MC API keys log. Is a delay normal?

    I’ll check again later and report back.

    Thread Starter rob66bnu

    (@rob66bnu)

    When I checked back, the second change had propogated from WP to MC so the connection appears to be working normally.

    The mc4wp General Settings page is STILL showing 503 Service Unavailable message and Status = Not Connected. That is misleading and a time waster. Fix that and I’ll be happy. ??

    Plugin Contributor Lap

    (@lapzor)

    Could you contact us on [email protected], you can put a link to this thread in the email so we know what it is about. I would like to take a look why it would give a 503 error if it’s actually connected.

    As you see the SSL cURL call IS routed over a different IP, but at this point that seems probably unrelated to the issue.

    Thanks!

    I am having the same problem. I am not being blocked by Akamai and I can see no API calls when I look so I’m at a loss of what to do next?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • The topic ‘503 Service Unavailable, NOT blocked by Akamai’ is closed to new replies.