How to resolve Internal server error 500 in wordpress?

How to resolve Internal server error 500 in wordpress?

What is Internal Server Error 500?

Internal server error 500 is a very generic error which will occur for N number of reasons.

These are the few possibilities for the Internal server error 500.
 
1. .htaccess corruption [In WordPress, any plugin/theme may create this issue] [Max case].
2. Recent WordPress/Theme/Plugin updates may cause this exception [Medium possibility].
3. Any Syntax exception [very less possibility].
4. Other possibilities [Memory issue, issue with hosting provider etc.]

 

How to resolve Internal Server Error 500 in WordPress ?

 

Before resolving this issue let us understand this issue,
1. occurs only for site/blog or [eg: ngdeveloper.com]
2. site/blog and also in admin page[eg:ngdeveloper.com and ngdeveloper.com/wp-admin].

 

If this occurs only for site/blog:

Then you can login to your wordpress admin panel [eg:ngdeveloper.com/wp-admin] and follow the below steps to resolve the issue,

1. Disable or Deactivate all the plugins and check.
If you are facing the same issue still then keep plugins as deactived only and continue the below steps.

2. Change your current theme to default theme [eg: twentyfourteen, twentyfifteen etc..]

3. Still facing the issue, then login to your site through FTP [Filezilla software can be used to login] and inside public_html folder you can see .htaccess file, rename it and take a back up of this to your local and remove from the server.

Now in wordpress admin panel, Settings -> Permalinks, go to permalinks and get back to other screens without doing any changes. This step we are doing to create the .htaccess file again in the public_html folder. .htaccess will be created when we click permalinks in wordpress.

If this occurs for both site/blog and admin pages [eg:ngdeveloper.com and ngdeveloper.com/wp-admin]

If you are facing Internal server error 500 issue with both site and admin pages then we it can be identified and resolved below way,

1. Again we have to deactivate or disable all the plugins only, but this time we have to do through FTP, since wp-admin also returns Internal Server Error.

How to Deactivate or Disable the plugins through FTP or When not able to login to admin pages?

Simply by renaming the folder plugins to some other names [eg:plugins_renamed] will deactivate all the plugins. plugins folder you can find in wp-content folder.

2. Change the current theme to default theme, this can be done through Database wp_options table [current_theme option_name] or if you remember what was your last activated theme, you can directly rename that in wp-content/themes folder. Which will force wordpress to use the default theme. [db theme update is the recommended one.]

3. Step 3 is same as above case[only site/blog returns Internal Server Error 500 case].

After all this step either issue will be back to normal with different theme and without any plugins or blank page will be displayed or still the same issue retained. But same issue will be retained only for site, admin pages atleast will be proper and allow us to login.

Not able to login and facing the same issue still ?

Take all the backups’s first and proceed updating your themes and wordpress and try again with the above steps based on the case you face.

 

Why Blank Page comes in WordPress?

I faced the same issue with ngdeveloper.com itself, I resolved it by updating my theme, before that I ensured by changing my theme to default theme then Internal server error resolved but blank page issue occured.

That I resolved by disabling all the plugins, updated the theme, then I activated one by one plugin. As per my case BFS plugin wrote something in .htaccess file which causes issue for me.

Hope I helped you to resolve the issue. Feel free to write your comments in the below comment section.