HTTP Status Codes Explained
This can be one of those terms that leaves a blank look upon the face of any of our accountancy clients that we mention this to, but actually it’s quite a simple thing to understand. Arm yourself with the knowledge of HTTP codes and their meaning and you can keep your website ticking over nicely.
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and simply means a method for transmitting webpage data across the internet using a server-client model. The “server” is generally a web-host that is running web server software whereas the “client” is a personal device such as a mobile, a laptop or a home pc.
Every time you go to access a website, the client talks to the web server to establish accessibility. It does this via your web browser and the web server responds by giving an HTTP status code. If the access is given, you might not notice the HTTP code. It’s usually noticeable when there is an error and the connection in denied.
A 404 error is a common HTTP code that you might be familiar with. It’s the code you are presented with if a page no longer exists because it has been removed or the URL has changed. The user will be displayed a page from that website but denying access to any content. You might already know that these are fixable by putting a redirect in place, redirecting that page either to its new location or to a page with similar content.
HTTP Status Code Categories.
HTTP codes are categorised into 5 different areas. Within these categories are a vast range of different codes for different responses. The categories are:
100-199 – information responses
200-299 – successful responses, i.e. 200 status
300-399 – redirected URLs, i.e. 301 and 302 redirects
400-499 – client errors, i.e. 404 errors
500-599 – server errors, i.e. 500 errors
So What HTTP Status Codes Exist Within These?
102 Processing
GET: The resource has been fetched and is transmitted in the message body.
HEAD: The entity headers are in the message body.
PUT or POST: The resource describing the result of the action is transmitted in the message body.
TRACE: The message body contains the request message as received by the server
203 Non-Authoritative Information
207 Multi-Status
208 Already Reported
226 IM Used
305 Use Proxy
306 unused
407 Proxy Authentication Required
416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable
421 Misdirected Request
423 Locked
424 Failed Dependency
431 Request Header Fields Too Large
451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons
505 HTTP Version Not Supported
511 Network Authentication Required
For further help with HTTP status codes and your website contact us here at Whitefish Marketing. We are a Kent based digital marketing agency who specialise in building and marketing for accountancy websites, offering a range of services from website design, PPC, SEO, email marketing, content marketing and social media management. For further information on how they can help your business, contact them on 01303 720 288 or head to www.whitefishmarketing.co.uk.
