Better WP Security 500 Error Code SOLUTION

First – I’m self-trained in WP.org, so I’m not a geek and not all that used to coding. Please don’t kill the messenger if you speak code! And please chime in if you can add to this.

I searched through about 30 different online posts about the 500 Server error that shut down my site. This was a result of trying to use Better WP Security without enough understanding to follow the limited directions on the section for blocking users, agents, hosts and IP’s. I couldn’t find the exact directions on how to fix my site and was tearing my hair out. So I cobbled together something that worked and wanted to share it in case anyone else is having the same problem.
(This is for CPanel X users. You may have to interpolate.)

1. Log on to Cpanel
2. Go to File Manager / Root (make sure to click on “show hidden files”
3. Find the Plug in folder for your WP Site
4. Delete the Better WP Security Plug In
5. Find .htaccess file
6. Change the permissions from 0644 to something like 0677
7. Click on edit
8. Remove everything between the #Begin Better WP Security and the #End Better WP Security
9. What you want left in the .htaccess file is something that looks similar to this code:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Yours may be different – not sure if you can just cut and paste what I put in Bold above… but you get the picture.

10. Save the updated file and change the permissions back to 0644 (very important)

You should be able to log on to your WP.org site and it should look just as good as new.

My Theme is Evolve and I’m using WP.org version 3.8.1

I may or may not reinstall Better WP Security – I don’t know if there’s a cache somewhere that would reload the offending code. I may just go to wordfence.