How do I get my droplet to listen on port 80 and port 443?

Posted on April 2, 2020

By 78eb2190918a40b6a98f0bb5de7f96

I can connect to my droplet through Putty and DO console, but not through any web browser to connect to wordpress login admin. The problem: tcp ports 80 and 443 are now showing closed and connection refused. DNS A record (DO gave me a new IP) also not cached around the world even after 4 days. Double checked configuration in the droplet and set droplet firewall (even though none were set in the first place), and applied sudo rules UFW in console for allowing the ports. Domain is configured correctly. Disabled my own firewall on windows. What could the problem be??

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78eb2190918a40b6a98f0bb5de7f96

April 2, 2020

Ive just recieved an email from DO and they are kind of urging me to create a new droplet using this guide: https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/images/snapshots/how-to/create-and-restore-droplets/

I think that’s what I will do later on. Apparently the current droplet im using doesn’t include a web server - no idea what happened!

78eb2190918a40b6a98f0bb5de7f96

April 2, 2020

Hi @KDSys,

Thanks for responding, but this droplet is a one-click install. Why do I need to download apache/Nginx?

This was the initial install: https://www.wpexplorer.com/install-wordpress-digitalocean/

KFSys

April 2, 2020

Hi @martyncompu,

There are a few possible issues. Firstly, in order for the ports to be opened, something would need to listen to them. On port 80 and 443 usually what listens to them are services like Apache/Nginx. They are used to process the requests on the server and server the websites on it. Having said that, please make sure you have either Apache or Nginx installed and configured.

If you are unsure how, you can check the following articles:

Install and configure Apache

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-the-apache-web-server-on-ubuntu-18-04

Install and configure Nginx

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-nginx-on-ubuntu-18-04

Firewall

If you are using UFW, you can execute

sudo ufw allow 80
sudo ufw allow 443

If you are using only IPtables, you can execute

iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

DNS

Lastly, make sure your Domain’s DNS is properly configured and is pointing to your Droplet. Again, there is pretty good DigitalOcean documentation related to this which can be checked here