500 Internal Server Error on new post submit

Actually I made a mistake in assuming the above jquery excerpts were hard code rather than html page source (late night).

The jquery files as loaded are normal and don’t look like the source of the problem.

However the 200 and 500 errors are abnormal.

Hi Jonga1306

As you have noticed error reporting on submits in the latest development version is improved hence the different response from the last version.

I think you have definitely found the root cause of the problem. We have had problems in the past with three way situations where another plugin has combined with a theme and Frontend to cause a problem.

It’s always worth changing the theme temporarily back to a WordPress default theme when testing problems of this nature.

The current version of the theme HotNews is listed as being WordPress 3.5.1 compatiable.

The website of HotNews doesn’t list any problems of this nature but it’s worth a comment on their website just in case the author knows of the problem and already has a solution.

Causes for the 500 error are multiple. It could be that the theme is rewritting the url but there are many other possibilities.

A couple of things you could do to get more info on the error.

1. Check your server error logs
2. Enable WP_DEBUG (NB will show logs of warnings). A good plugin I use for this is Debug Bar and its sister Debug Bar Console

A couple of questions however.

1) What version of HotNews are you using
2) Did you try MembersList with a default WordPress theme?
3) Did the other plugins still have problems with Frontend deactivated and HotNews as theme?

Thanks
TheProfessor

I have been replying to the development fork thread, but I thought I would jump in here given that I experienced the same problems with:

Message from webpage
Ajax Form Error
Status: Timeout
Error: Timeout
Response: (empty)

I discovered this was an issue with some combination of theme and plugins. I am using Preference, and even though it was designed for 3.5, I can’t get the latest development fork of WPUF to work unless I change themes. I still need to test all my plugins, as well.

Hi jonga1306,

The info you provided is more than useful and has enabled me to determine the source of your problem.

Your problem is related to both bugs and PHP error reporting.

For Members List the following lines indicate a bug

Notice: Undefined index: page in /home/mysite/public_html/wp-content/plugins/members-list/core/search.php on line 30

The actual lines in code is

if($_REQUEST['page'] !== 'members-list-configure-search') {
	return;
}

This is actually run on every access to WordPress. The problem is the query variable ‘page’ is not defined on most accesses and hence the error.

The actual lines should read

if((!isset($_REQUEST['page']) or $_REQUEST['page'] !== 'members-list-configure-search') {
	return;
}

The same problem exists for this error notice as well

Notice: Undefined index: page in /home/mysite/public_html/wp-content/plugins/members-list/core/sort.php on line 30

To fix change

if($_REQUEST['page'] !== 'members-list-configure-sort') {
	return;
}

to

if((!isset($_REQUEST['page']) or $_REQUEST['page'] !== 'members-list-configure-sort') {
	return;
}

For s2member the following error is self explanatory.

Notice: Undefined variable: cache_needs_updating in /home/mysite/public_html/wp-content/plugins/s2member/includes/classes/cache.inc.php on line 94

Why does this happen when your HotNews theme is enabled? Well I’m guessing its to do with PHP error reporting facilities . Normally default PHP behaviour is NOT to report errors of ‘Notice’ status. However this can be changed by three methods.

1. php.ini ‘error_reporting’ setting (link1 link2)

2. Use of the PHP ini_set() function to set ‘error_reporting’

3. Use of the PHP error_reporting() function

I’m guessing that the theme developer has used option 2 or 3 for development purposes and forgotten to comment it out.

So why does this cause a crash. Well this is indicated by the following message.

WARNING: wp-includes/class-wp.php:402 - Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/mysite/public_html/wp-content/plugins/members-list/core/search.php:30)

This line in class-wp.php is part of the standard WordPress function send_headers(). This is normally called to send html headers for each page. However the error in search.php was already triggered before this which resulted in it sending a header previously and hence this error message.

So why is Frontend triggering this? Well it’s not just Frontend. It’s anything that uses admin-ajax.php for AJAX queries. The AJAX query results in the Member’s List error triggering (during the loading of WordPress bootstrap) and adding an error heading before AJAX adds it’s own header and hence the problem.