How to fix 500 internal server error in WordPress

Are you facing the 500 internal server error in your WordPress website and looking for a solution for that? Here in this article, we will guide you to solve the 500 internal server errors in WordPress.

WordPress is facing many errors in different situations, 500 internal servers error is one of them. It is one of the most common issues in your WordPress website. If you are a beginner in WordPress then the 500 internal servers will make you annoyed but with some easy steps, you can easily solve it.

Reasons for 500 internal server errors

There are many causes behind the 500 internal server errors in a WordPress-based website. Any website that runs with a web server can face this type of error. This type of server error will not provide the developer with any information so it’s like removing the pain without knowing the place.

Internal Server errors occurred most of the time for your installed theme and plugin’s function. The conflict between plugins or themes is also responsible for the problem.

Reaching the PHP memory limit is another reason for the 500 internal server error. If your .htacces file is corrupted then you will face the server error.

Sometimes your website runs well but when you are trying to access the admin dashboard you will face an error. Let’s take a look at how you can solve the problem.

Fix 500 internal server errors in WordPress

Increase PHP memory limit

When you face 500 internal server errors on your website the first thing you need to do is to check your PHP memory limit. Most of the time server errors will happen to reach the maximum PHP memory limit. You need to increase your PHP memory limit.

To increase the PHP memory limit you need to edit the wp-config.php file. You need to add this little code snippet at the end of the wp-config.php file.

define( ‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’ );

This code will increase your PHP limit to 256 MB. After increasing the PHP memory limit to go to your website the 500 internal server errors should be solved.

Check the corrupt .htaccess file

After increasing the PHP memory limit if the problem still occurs then you should check for the corrupt .htaccess file. To check the .htacccess file of your website you need to login to your website using FTP or the file manager app using your cPanel access.

Login to your cPanel account and then go to the .htaccess file directory. You will find the .htaccess file in the same directory wp-admin is located.

No rename the .htaccess file. Give it a name like .htaccess_new.  After renaming the file go to your website and then 500 internal servers will be solved.

If the problem is solved then go to Setting > Permalinks from your website admin dashboard and then click on the save button. You don’t need to change anything click on the save button, it will generate a new .htaccess to prevent 404 errors.

Deactivate all plugins

Sometimes if any plugin conflicts with the WordPress core or other plugin, it will create some errors in your website. It is one of the common issues in WordPress.

When a plugin conflict occurs you can not easily identify which plugins are responsible for that. So you need to deactivate all the plugins and then check if the problems still happened or not. If the problem is solved then you need to activate the plugin one by one and check which plugin is responsible.

To deactivate all the plugins you can use the bulk option. Go to Plugins > Installed plugins and select all the plugins. Then from the bulk option dropdown menu choose to deactivate and click on the Apply button.

Contact hosting provider

If all the processes failed to solve the error then you need to contact your hosting provider. Ask for help from your hosting provider and they will check the root of the error. Before doing any troubleshooting on your website, first, create a backup of your website. So that if anything goes wrong you don’t need to lose your data.

There are a lot of backup plugins available. You can use any of the backup plugins to automatically back up your website.

Wrapping up

Following the process, you will be able to fix the 500 internal server error on your website. You can see our other tutorials to learn How to fix white text and missing buttons errors in the WordPress visual editor

Beginner’s guide to troubleshooting WordPress errors

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