WordPress is easy to use but sometimes its get tricky when you get unnecessary errors out of nowhere. lets say your website was working fine and suddenly you get all these 500 internal server error. You can get this error from a large number of things like unsupported WordPress plugins, bad web host, corrupted .htaccess file etc.
But every problem have their own solution and there is some for this too read this article carefully to fix 500 internal error in your WordPress website.
First of all you need to check if this 500 internal server error is showing up on every pages or some pages. if its just on some pages and not in every page then its safe to assume that your server is fine. Now check if you can login to your WordPress admin dashboard, if not then don’t worry about that.
So if the problem is not with the server then it must be the file system that got corrupted or some thing.
Table of Contents
What causes a 500 Internal Server Error?
500 internal server error is not WordPress specific it can happen to any website some time its very hard to tell what caused the error. However here is a list of things that can cause internal server error.
- Corrupted Plugins Files
- Corrupted core file
- Wrong permission on file system
- PHP memory limit
- Corrupted .htaccess file
What is 500 Internal Server Error?
Increase the PHP Memory Limit to Fix this
If the internal server error is seen only in WordPress admin then you should increase the memory limit using this method.
- Step 1 : Create a blank text file called php.ini
- Step 2 : Paste this code in there: memory=64MB
- Step 3 : Save the file
- Step 4 : Upload it into your /wp-admin/ folder using FTP
If it solves your problem then it doesn’t end here because you need to find out what what causes the memory limit exhaustion. You should ask your web hosting company to check their logs to see what actually caused this memory exhaustion.
Check for Bad .htaccess File
Visit your websites root folder using ftp or a the file manager provided by your web host and find your .htaccess file. And rename it to .htaccess_old or something else. One this done visit your website again to see if this fixed your website.
Now if this fixed your website then now you need to visit your admin panel and go to Settings>>Permalinks to save the current permalink again. Do not change any setting here just click on the save button. this will create a .htaccess file and your work is done here.
Checking your File Permission
Most web host are using Linux and file permission are a great cause of errors in Linux file systems. Wrong permission setting can cause a lot of errors on your WordPress site.
In your WordPress root directory all files and folders should be 755 or 644. Make sure you have the right setting for your WordPress files and folders.
You can change the setting using a ftp client or your web host’s file manager.
Deactivate all Plugins
If these steps does not help you fixing internal server error then this error may be caused by some plugins that updated recently.
However there is now to to find out which plugin caused this so best way to do this is to de activate all plugin at once to check if the error still exist.
Here is how to do it without visiting wp-admin. Rename your plugins directly to something else and that will de activate all the plugins.
If this fixed your problem then rename the plugins folder and visit WordPress admin. Now you need to activate each plugin one by one to see which plugin cause the internal server error.
Re-upload your WordPress Core files
What if you tried all above methods but still getting internal server error on your pages? This method is your last resort. In this method we will replace all the WordPress core files and folders. Download a fresh version of WordPress from wordpress.org and extract the files in a folder. Now upload the wp-admin and wp-includes folder to your root folder and replace them with your new files overwriting them. Now refresh the site and check if everything works. If it still doesn’t work you need to contact your web host for technical support.
Contacting Your Web host for Support
Most web host does have online chat support or phone support on their site. So use that to contact your web host and let them know the situation you are facing and tell them the methods you have already tried and ask them if their server caused such things or not.
Conclusion
500 Internal Server error is a very frustrating issue as there are no clear option to see what actually caused the issue. So it need more trial and error method than needed.
But to make sure that it doesn’t cost you a site you may need to back up your site regularly. And try to avoid cheap web hosting solution or worse free hosting providers.
It doesn’t mean all free web host providers are bad. Free static file host are very good to go but most free php hosts are bad in everyday possible.
