diff --git a/packages/api/src/elastic/pages.ts b/packages/api/src/elastic/pages.ts
index fc4671be2..6b9c679d8 100644
--- a/packages/api/src/elastic/pages.ts
+++ b/packages/api/src/elastic/pages.ts
@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ import {
 } from './types'
 
 const MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH = 10 * 1024 * 1024 // 10MB
+const CONTENT_LENGTH_ERROR = 'Your page content is too large to be saved.'
 
 const appendQuery = (builder: ESBuilder, query: string): ESBuilder => {
   interface Field {
@@ -413,8 +414,7 @@ export const createPage = async (
         contentLength: page.content.length,
       })
 
-      page.content = 'Your page content is too large to be saved.'
-      page.state = ArticleSavingRequestStatus.Failed
+      page.content = CONTENT_LENGTH_ERROR
     }
 
     const { body } = await client.index({
@@ -445,15 +445,13 @@ export const updatePage = async (
   ctx: PageContext
 ): Promise<boolean> => {
   try {
-    // max 10MB
     if (page.content && page.content.length > MAX_CONTENT_LENGTH) {
       logger.info('page content is too large', {
         pageId: page.id,
         contentLength: page.content.length,
       })
 
-      page.content = 'Your page content is too large to be saved.'
-      page.state = ArticleSavingRequestStatus.Failed
+      page.content = CONTENT_LENGTH_ERROR
     }
 
     await client.update({
diff --git a/packages/api/src/server.ts b/packages/api/src/server.ts
index f1193f830..886173432 100755
--- a/packages/api/src/server.ts
+++ b/packages/api/src/server.ts
@@ -210,8 +210,6 @@ const main = async (): Promise<void> => {
     logger.notice(`🚀 Server ready at ${apollo.graphqlPath}`)
   })
 
-  listener.timeout = 1000 * 60 * 10 // 10 minutes
-
   // Avoid keepalive timeout-related connection drops manifesting in user-facing 502s.
   // See here: https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/https#timeouts_and_retries
   // and: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/nodejs/how-instances-are-managed#timeout
@@ -219,6 +217,7 @@ const main = async (): Promise<void> => {
   listener.keepAliveTimeout = 630 * 1000 // 30s more than the 10min keepalive used by appengine.
   // And a workaround for node.js bug: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/27363
   listener.headersTimeout = 640 * 1000 // 10s more than above
+  listener.timeout = 640 * 1000 // match headersTimeout
 }
 
 // only call main if the file was called from the CLI and wasn't required from another module
diff --git a/packages/thumbnail-handler/src/index.ts b/packages/thumbnail-handler/src/index.ts
index 7fa2472fa..301103d15 100644
--- a/packages/thumbnail-handler/src/index.ts
+++ b/packages/thumbnail-handler/src/index.ts
@@ -346,7 +346,11 @@ export const thumbnailHandler = Sentry.GCPFunction.wrapHttpFunction(
         console.log('thumbnail already set')
         // pre-cache thumbnail first if exists
         const imageProxyUrl = createImageProxyUrl(page.image, 320, 320)
-        await fetchImage(imageProxyUrl)
+        const image = await fetchImage(imageProxyUrl)
+        if (!image) {
+          console.log('thumbnail image not found')
+          page.image = undefined
+        }
       }
 
       console.log('pre-caching all images...')