[hluska]

I don't think you understand what a 503 means.

Edit - In the wild, a 503 usually means that the person who built out the site did not do a very good job of estimating traffic. An empty response can return 503 if the server is overwhelmed with connections.

In other words, a 503 more likely than not has nothing to do with code and has everything to do with provisioning enough resources for the amount of traffic received. Unfortunately, that's a tough thing to get right, particularly when you land on the front page of Hacker News during extremely busy times.

[mk-61]

My comment was just (probably ugly) joke attempt. Though, you was right - I didn't understand 503 fully, and then I became interested after your hint and googled for it.

Now I know, that it can be easily a cause (out of the many) when owner simply "suspended" site for a while, and fixing stuff.

Thank you.

[hluska]

Uh oh, I fear that I may have started you down the cold, dark path towards becoming a sysadmin!!! :)

If you're interested in taking this further, it's a great chance to figure out how you would:

a.) Deal with a 503 if it happened while your site was under heavy load.

b.) Harden your site to avoid 503s.

Have fun and thanks for your kind response!!