What is causing the intermittent 504 gateway timeout issues in our Webflow CMS? We have conducted health checks and observed a pattern of occurrences.

Intermittent 504 Gateway Timeout issues in your Webflow CMS are typically triggered by backend delays or request bottlenecks, often during publishing or API interactions.

1. Understand What Causes a 504 Gateway Timeout

• A 504 error indicates that a gateway or proxy (used by Webflow’s infrastructure) did not receive a timely response from an upstream server.
• In Webflow, this usually reflects delays in content delivery, API publishing queues, or CMS load spikes.

2. Identify Common Triggers in Webflow

• Large CMS Collections or a high total number of CMS items across multiple collections.
• Frequent Publishing or syncing updates across staging and live domains.
• Slow API Responses, especially when using Webflow’s CMS API to update hundreds of items at once.
• 3rd-Party Integrations (like Zapier, Make, or external forms) repeatedly hitting the CMS can clog performance.
• Custom Code or Embeds that overload the DOM or create long blocking requests during page rendering.

3. Check Webflow's Status and Infrastructure

• Visit status.webflow.com during the time of the health checks to correlate your 504 events with Webflow server-side incidents or degraded performance.
• Webflow’s CMS backend sometimes undergoes rate limiting or micro-outages, especially during high-traffic times (e.g., when many users are publishing).

4. Reduce Content Publishing Load

• Avoid making frequent publishes of large CMS updates across the full site.
• If you're syncing data from a 3rd-party source, batch the updates with delays (e.g., 10–20 per minute).
• If triggering static exports or large content migrations, do them during off-peak hours.

5. Monitor API and CMS Limits

• Webflow enforces rate limits for API calls (60 requests/minute per token).
• Amplifying calls (e.g., trying to read/write all Blog posts at once) can result in timeouts.
• Review the CMS size: capability degrades above 10,000 items total across all collections.

6. Contact Webflow Support If Issue Persists

• Provide timestamps, affected URLs, publishing actions, and frequency patterns observed from your health checks.
• Webflow support can review backend logs to confirm the cause of the delay or timeout.

Summary

Intermittent 504 Gateway Timeout issues in Webflow CMS usually stem from backend publishing bottlenecks, CMS scale limits, or external automation overload. To resolve and prevent them, optimize your publishing frequency, monitor external integrations, and stay within Webflow's CMS and API thresholds. For ongoing concerns, escalate to Webflow support with detailed logs and timestamps.