Why WebSocket Fails in Production on SiteGround If your WebSocket connection fails in production on SiteGround, you’re not alone. The error you’re seeing— WebSocket is closed before the connection is established —typically means the WebSocket handshake is failing, often due to SSL, port, or server configuration issues. SiteGround’s shared hosting environment is not optimized for raw WebSocket traffic by default, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Let’s walk through the root causes and how to fix them. Root Cause #1: Missing SSL Certificates in the Expected Path Your code assumes that /etc/ssl/privkey.pem and /etc/ssl/fullchain.pem exist on SiteGround. In reality, SiteGround Shared and Cloud hosting customers don’t have direct access to /etc/ssl . Those paths are internal to server management and not exposed to your application. This is why fs.readFileSync() fails—it can’t find the files.…