backend 500 & 404 errors

  • Resolved factotum

    (@factotum)


    10 years, 3 months ago

    I’m getting the following 500 + 404 error:

    500 Internal Server Error
    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

    Please contact the server administrator, support@xxxx.xxx and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

    More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

    Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    It is happening ONLY under the following circumstances:

    1. When I enter an incorrect username or password on the wp-login page
    2. When I click on Dashboard/Updates (Dashboard/Home works fine)
    3. When I click on Appearance/Theme (all other Appearance submenu items work fine).
    4. Any other time an error occurs

    I am able to back out of the error page using my browser back button.

    I’m not sure exactly when this started, since I don’t use these particular pages often. I think it was with an update of WordPress, possibly as long as a year or more ago. Then again, it might just have started when I updated to 3.8.

    We are a small nonprofit. Our WordPress site is password protected for confidential internal use, so I can’t post a URL. It was the first WordPress site I built 6 years ago, and I made a lot of modifications to the theme files (don’t yell at me, I know better now). Therefore, I have not updated the theme since I built it (which I figure is pretty low risk since a). the site is not indexed, and b). there’s nothing that secret on it).

    I’m guessing something in the old version of the theme is no longer working with the most recent versions of WordPress, but am hoping the symptoms above will indicate which file(s) are affected so that someone more knowledgeable than I can guide me in fixing just those files. I’m a part-time nonprofit employee, and I really don’t have time to redo the theme modifications all over again, or configure a new theme.

    The theme is Shades of Blue. It was last updated in 2009, and we may not have the last version of it since I built the site in 2008.

    Can anyone help?

    P.S. – We only have one plugin, and its associated widget (Event Calendar), and I have already tried disabling them both, which did not fix the problem.

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • Pioneer Web Design

    (@swansonphotos)

    10 years, 3 months ago

    I am able to back out of the error page using my browser back button

    That indicates to me an issue with site caching either local or server.

    Thread Starter factotum

    (@factotum)

    10 years, 2 months ago

    I’m not sure what that means, or what to do with it.

    I updated to WordPress 3.8.1 to see if that would fix the problem. I had to do it manually, as the updates page of my Dashboard is one of the pages I can’t access. Wow, what a hassle compared to the one-click update! After updating, I no longer got the 500/404 error when logging in with an incorrect username or password. The logon page returned to its cute head-shaking behavior when incorrect info is entered in either field.

    However, the update to 3.8.1 did not fix the errors when attempting to access the Dashboard/Updates and Appearance/Themes pages. Furthermore, after the update, my Plugins/Installed Plugins page also returned the 50/404 error, which was a headache, since I had deactivated the plugins to do the manual update, and couldn’t get to them to turn them back on. However, I was able to fix this by deleting hello.php from the plugins directory (which is the only file I had added to that directory during the WordPress update). Then I was able to access Plugins/Installed plugins again and reactivate my plugins.

    Additional information:

    “500” does not actually appear in the title of the error page. I added it to “Internal Server Error” because the browser tab shows “500 Internal Server Error” as the page title.

    The URLs for the pages that return the 500/404 errors are:

    our_domain/subfolder/WordPress/wp-admin/update-core.php (Dashboard/Updates page)

    our_domain/subfolder/WordPress/wp-admin/themes.php
    (Appearance/Themes)

    What do those two pages have in common that is not true of any other page in the dashboard? Could really use some help from people who know more about this than I do….

    BTW, my login userID no longer seems to be case sensitive. Is that new, or has that always been true and I’m just now noticing it?

    dharward

    (@dharward)

    10 years, 2 months ago

    I am having this exact same problem.

    I even went as far as doing brand new fresh install using the default theme and no plugins I still get the same issue.

    This is so very weird.

    Thread Starter factotum

    (@factotum)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    I am curious what theme you are using? My older, not updated theme is one of the suspects in my case.

    BTW, I am back to receiving the error on the login page if I enter the password incorrectly (for awhile there it reverted to normal headshaking behavior, but no longer, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t changed anything, this time).

    What’s more, I’m getting the error on the login page even when I enter the <i>correct</i> password. If I refresh the page (without re-entering the password), it does log me in the second time. I don’t think it should be saving my entered password info so that it’s still there for a page reload, should it? (Though of course I’m glad I can log in to my dashboard).

    The only other person who has bothered to respond to this thread said something about caching issues (which the above also sounds like, no?). Unfortunately, that person did not elaborate, so I don’t really know what to do with that information.

    Please bear in mind, folks, that if we were programmers, we would probably not need to post to this forum in the first place.

    esmi

    (@esmi)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    If you require assistance then, as per the Forum Welcome, please post your own topic.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    10 years, 1 month ago

    What’s the content of the .htaccess file?

    (Use the code tags in the bar above the text box so it’ll be readable)

    Thread Starter factotum

    (@factotum)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    There are two, not sure which one you mean. The one at the same level as the WordPress folder is the password protection one, I believe.

    AuthUserFile [PATH] .htpasswd
    AuthGroupFile /dev/null
    AuthName [HIDING IT]
    AuthType Basic
    <limit GET>
    require valid-user
    </limit>

    The one in the level above the WordPress folder:

    Action php-cgi /cgi-bin/php5
    AddHandler php-cgi .php
    SetEnv DEFAULT_PHP_VERSION 5

    I think the php version is something our host had me put in.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    10 years, 1 month ago

    Is this site behind a firewall or proxy of any kind? Not just an htaccess based password, but is it actually restricted from outgoing internet access?

    Thread Starter factotum

    (@factotum)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    No.

    Thread Starter factotum

    (@factotum)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    But our web host is primarily an ISP, so I think their directory structure is a little different. I’ve already spoken to them. They said it was a WordPress issue, but they don’t really know anything about WordPress. If I can identify a problem on their end, they are usually pretty responsive, but I’m on my own for figuring out what it is before I go to them. We’re a non-profit and get our hosting free, so we can’t really complain!

    Thread Starter factotum

    (@factotum)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    Original poster here, still trying to fix this. I’ve been reading various troubleshooting guides on this error, and they all refer to an htaccess file in the same directory as the wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes folders. I don’t have an htaccess file there (a bunch of other places, but not there). Should I?

    I tried going to my permalinks setting in my dashboard and saving settings, which (according to these same troubleshooting guides) supposedly generates a new and correct htaccess file if you don’t already have one there, but nothing happened. Still no htaccess file.

    jeffjunior

    (@jeffjunior)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    The problem is wordpress and it’s happening anytime you update a theme to a newer revision. I’m on wordpress 3.8.1 and I updated my WooCommerce Theme from 2.1.3 to 2.1.4 and 2.1.5 a day later. If you right click your mouse on your webpages in wordpress and select “Inspect element – Console” you will see this error message: event.returnValue is deprecated. Please use the standard event.preventDefault() instead.
    Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (Internal Server Error) http://www.oneshopatatime.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php. <- This is a wordpress file that is blocking any attempt to change sql database values using theme settings. This is only a problem after updating a Theme to a newer revision.

    jeffjunior

    (@jeffjunior)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    It’s not likely we will see a fix for the above problem anytime soon. If you read back through the posts on the Wootique website, the same problem was being reported over 6 years ago. The issue appears to be that when a Theme is being installed, there are configuration parameter values that need to be provided by the Theme Plugin to the WordPress installation manager. These values need to be changed in the appropriate database and any cached registers dumped before the install. All the values needed to make the interface between the new Theme and WordPress work are either not being reported or they are being ignored or they are being overwritten by cached values stored in some register that was not dumped prior to the theme change. [advertising copy removed by moderator]

    Thread Starter factotum

    (@factotum)

    10 years ago

    I finally found the problem. It was indeed in an htaccess file, which I had placed in the directory above my WordPress installation back in 2011 under direction from my webhost to force it to run php 5 instead of php 4 (which was my host’s default php version at the time). Although my host now runs php 5.5, that file was keeping it at php 5, which is now too low to run WordPress. I updated the file (which I did by changing 5 to 55, NOT 5.5, in case anyone else needs to do this), and the problem was finally fixed.

    Thanks to everyone who tried to help me with this!

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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