Bad Gateway errors originate always on the server, and contrary to the info you will find online, there’s nothing wrong with your website, your browser cache or cookies.
For example, WP Engine runs a useless script (for webmasters) on its servers, called “Process killer” that steps in to cut any script running for 60 or more seconds. I call it “useless” because you can’t run any maintenance to a website. Let’s say you have an e-commerce (Woocommerce) site and you need to update a couple of plugins, which is quite often the case and you will be running more than 20 plugins on your shop.
Well, on WP Engine you won’t be able to update any of them, because the genius “Process killer” will stop the update process after 60 seconds. This hint comes directly from a support rep.
Finally, your adventure can be ended only if you contact WP Engine support and ask them to update your plugins (you will be repeating the same request every week as there are quite often plugin updates). They will either try to run the updates in the terminal or if that doesn’t work (yes, even internally they do have issues updating the scripts!!!). Then, they will need to make a request internally to stop the bloody “Process killer” script. Brilliant isn’t it? Talking about losing clients…
Copy my message to WP Engine support
Click to copy the message below.
I need to sync site data with a third-party service, therefore I'd kindly ask you to disable the Process Killer (Server Timeout) script for this domain for the next few minutes.
I know that doesn’t make any sense but website owners still get caught in the net of sponsored posts that promote this bad UX host. After getting this insight, I’ve already pulled from WP Engine the client sites I manage resulting in 1000s of dollars in their loss.