HTTP ports are showing as "Closed", preventing website from loading

Axel Cervera

Symptoms

Visiting a website reports a failure to connect such as:

ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
Connection to $IP_ADDRESS failed.

The system returned: (111) Connection refused

If you are able to perform a Nmap test to the affected domain, you can determine that the problem is that the HTTP ports are responding as "Closed".

nmap -Pn -sT $DOMAIN -p 80,443 --reason

Since the HTTP ports are "Closed" they are indicating that nothing is listening on the server end and thus

Make sure that the IP address that the website is using is not an IP that is listed as reserved.

WHM >> IP Functions >> Show/Edit Reserved IPs

Or in the following interface:

WHM >> Apache Configuration >> Reserved IP Address Editor

Please note that any IP address that is added as "Reserved" will not be listening on Apache, thus the website will not work.