Question

Website can't be reached: ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

Posted on October 5, 2020
Ubuntu 18.04 Nginx HTML DNS
Asked by Powasystem

Hello,

I recently bought a domain of namecheap, I followed this guide to setup the DNS to point to my droplet. I’ve also added the domain to my droplet following this other guide. I then installed nginx to try and get a basic website running, however I am unable to connect to the website using the domain name (powa.dev), google chrome show me the “This site can’t be reached” page with the error “ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED”. I tried using the IP of my droplet and I can access the website, I also tried to use curl -4 www.powa.dev and the response I get is the html code of the index. I can’t seem to find anyone else with the exact same problem and I’m a stuck in this situation as I’m new to hosting websites and using domain names, if anyone has a solution please let me know.

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• October 5, 2020

Accepted Answer

Hi there @Powasystem,

It looks like that your website is working as expected over http but not over https. At the moment as you have a redirect from http to https this is why the site is not loading in Chrome.

To get that fixed, I would recommend installing a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate as described in this tutorial here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-secure-nginx-with-let-s-encrypt-on-ubuntu-20-04

Once the SSL has been installed, make sure to open port 443 as well.

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby