Glossary Entry
What is HTTP Status Codes?
What HTTP Status Codes actually means, buzzwords removed — with the example that makes it land.
The short answer
HTTP status codes are the three-digit verdict stamped on every server response: 2xx succeeded, 3xx moved, 4xx blames your side, 5xx blames ours.
The rest of the page opens it up — the mechanics, why a site owner should care, and one concrete example of it at work.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
100+
Terms in the jargon buster
2 min
Average read time
Plain
English throughout
24/7
People, if you get stuck
The ones you meet daily are 200 OK, 301 moved permanently, 302 moved temporarily, 304 your copy is still good, 403 forbidden, 404 not found, 500 server error and 503 try again shortly. Search engines read these as instructions rather than merely as diagnostics.
Because machines act on them, the codes reach well beyond debugging. A 301 carries ranking signals across, a 503 tells a crawler to return later, and the wrong code teaches a lesson that sticks for months.
A way to picture HTTP Status Codes
A flag goes up with each reply: task complete, station moved permanently, no such target, systems down, stand by. The flag is read by machines, which change their next move accordingly.
Any analogy flattens the detail, naturally — but this one is solid enough to think with, and thinking is what a jargon buster is for.
What genuinely rides on it
Getting the code right is what makes redirects, error pages and maintenance windows work. The difference between a migration that keeps its rankings and one that wrecks them is quite literally a single number.
Nobody expects you to work at this layer daily. The aim is recognising it when it explains something — and that moment is exactly when this page pays for itself.
HTTP Status Codes out in the open
Every legacy address on a rebranded site answers with a 301. Browsers follow silently and search engines bring the rankings with them. A cheerful 'we have moved' page returned under a 200 would have left all that value stranded on dead URLs.
Scale that example across every website online and you have described the whole job of the concept in one stroke.
How Hosting & Domains deals with it
Here it largely looks after itself, since the defaults are sensible and the panel puts the controls within reach the moment you want them. Read on: 301 Redirect, 404 Error, Uptime and .htaccess.
NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching sit under every tier, the smallest plan included — that is the floor here, not an upgrade.
Unexplained jargon slows everybody down
An unexplained piece of jargon is, to us, a service defect. This is the support team's collected translations, published where a search engine can hand them over on our behalf.
Mailboxes at your own name are part of the plan — mail is included, not sold back to you at the checkout.
- 100+ entries, plain English all the way
- Ordinary analogies, working examples
- Neighbouring ideas linked together
- Written by our own support engineers
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
The next step, drawn out
Carry on into 301 Redirect and 404 Error — ideas rarely travel alone, so the neighbours are linked in.
Analogies that hold
Every concept comes with a mental model that returns exactly when you need it.
Stakes made explicit
More than what a thing is: the moments it turns out to be the answer to a problem you have.
Cross-wired entries
Related terms point at each other, so one lookup compounds into working knowledge.
This term, properly landed
HTTP Status Codes defined, pictured by analogy and located in your own panel — recognise-level after a single read.
Tied to real hosting
Examples name platforms you would genuinely use, never an abstract diagram on a whiteboard.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Find it in your own account
Nothing teaches a hosting term faster than finding it in your own panel; five minutes of looking beats an hour of reading.
- 2
Check the defaults as they stand
Look at how your account has it configured. Nine times in ten the default is right, and a check turns the guess into certainty.
- 3
Chase the neighbouring terms
Hosting terms travel in groups — 301 Redirect, 404 Error and Uptime finish this one's picture, each a two-minute read away.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
- PHP versions set per site from the control panel
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- Your existing site brought across by our engineers, at no charge
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for any client
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
- The name's first year included when you order annually
- SSH, Git and Composer on the developer plans
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Where can I read the status codes my site is returning?
The network tab in browser dev tools shows one per response, server logs record one per request, and SEO crawlers audit them across a whole site. It is the first check in most web debugging.
Which status codes should actually worry me?
Patterns rather than isolated cases: repeated 404s on URLs that ought to work, any sustained run of 5xx, and soft 404s, meaning error pages returned under a 200, quietly filling the search index with pages that do not exist.
Will the renewal cost more than the first term?
No. The rate you order at is the rate you renew at, year after year. There is no introductory teaser here, so no second-year jump is waiting — the hosting line stays a fixed figure your accounts can plan around.
What is the uptime commitment, and what happens in a month that misses it?
99.9% — and if a month falls below that through a fault on our side, our terms entitle you to a pro-rated credit; ask and we apply it. Calling it a target rather than a contractual SLA is a deliberate choice. Hardware and network faults surface through platform monitoring, usually before the first customer notices.
Keep reading
301 Redirect
A 301 redirect forwards one URL to another permanently, taking visitors across and passing search-ranking s…
.htaccess
.htaccess is the per-directory configuration file Apache reads on every request, and it is your lever for r…
How to Test Your Website Speed
The way it is really done, in order, with the usual mistake pointed out.
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