How To Fix The 500 Internal Server Error In WordPress

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Have you ever gotten a 500 Internal Server Error In WordPress?

I don’t know about you, but this makes me want to pull my hair out!

The good news is there is a solution and typically it’s fairly easy to troubleshoot.

Disable Mod Security

If you’re publishing a new post (or page) try logging into cPanel and disabling Mod Security to see if this is the culprit.

We have a video tutorial in our knowledgebase that lets you know exactly how to do this.

If this solves your problem, you can either continue with your publishing and re-enable when you’re finished, or reach out to our support team and see if they can’t whitelist the rule for your website.

Personally, I’ll just leave it disabled, get what I need finished, then re-enable.

If you disable Mod Security and still get the error, then chances are you need to dig a bit deeper.

Rename Your .htaccess File

If disabling Mod Security didn’t do the trick, the next step to troubleshoot is your .htaccess file.

Especially for those that are moving from an old web host, you may have some commands in your .htaccess file preventing the site to load.

I always like to go into File Manager, rename it to .htaccess1 and see if it solves the error.

If it does, you can automatically generate a new .htaccess file inside your WordPress admin area by going to Settings -> Permalinks and clicking save. This will generate you a brand new .htaccess file.

If you’ve made customizations, you may want to get a default WordPress .htaccess file and modify it accordingly.

Rename Your Plugins Folder

If the above two options didn’t work, it’s possible you have a rouge plugin.

Sometimes developers will release updates and for some reason or another they just don’t work with your setup.

This recently happened on our Name Hero blog and we had to revert back to an older version until they fixed it (that’s why it’s always good to have a backup before you update).

To do this, simply login to your file manager, navigate to the plugins directory (inside wp-content) and rename it to something like plugins1.

If this solves your error, you can rename the plugins1 folder back to plugins, then login to your WordPress admin area and deactivate each plugin one-by-one to find the one creating the error.

Once you find it, you may want to try downloading an update, reverting back to an older version, or submit a ticket to the developer to see if they can help sort it.

Change Your PHP Version / Limits

If you’ve done everything mentioned above and things STILL aren’t working, you may want to try a different version of PHP.

I highly recommend using at least PHP 7.0 for your WordPress website, but if you’re already using that, you may want to try PHP 5.6.

You can then get with the developer of your theme/plugins and see what changes need to be made to make it work with PHP 7.0+.

You may also find that your max_upload_limit needs increased, which you can also do inside of cPanel -> Select PHP version.

At Name Hero, we allow you to take full control over PHP from inside of cPanel, having the ability to choose from multiple versions of PHP.