Are you running a plugin called Multisite Robots Text Manager?
I bet you are. It’s buggy. Deactivate it and then try installing Postman.
Google is your friend.
Yes, I was. However, I deactivated it and installed postman, the site where it is enabled went down with the same behavior. No change. I won’t reinstall Multisite Robots but that doesn’t seem to be the cause, or at least it is not the only problem.
After deactivating that plugin – I tried another test:
Installed the plugin, activated it on two sites.
Both sites showed the same behavior – but now I’m not seeing errors being written to the error log.
Network admin still running fine.
Uninstalled plugin – we’re back on all sites.
Things I can say:
The problem only happens to the sites where it is active. (expected at least)
The apache errors are gone – but now I’m not seeing any errors.
The two sites don’t have a lot in common, but I looked at the plugins to see what there was:
Site 1:
*Akismet
Column Shortcodes
DreamSpeed CDN
Facebook Auto Publish
*Facebook Like Box
*Facebook Open Graph, Google+ and Twitter Card Tags
Jamie Social Icons
JM Twitter Cards
Link Library
* Link Manager
* My Custom CSS
My Link Order
* NewStatPress
* Ninja Forms
Page2Cat: Category Pages & Posts Shortcodes
Shortcode Reference
Simple Pull Quote
Simple Tags
Social Stickers
Subscribe2
TinyMCE Advanced
WP Custom Category Pages
WP Fluid Images
WP Tiles
Select WP to Twitter
Select wp-jquery-lightbox
* wp-jquery-lightbox
Site 2
Akismet – Version 3.1.5
CloudFlare – Version 1.3.19
Enhanced Text Widget – Version 1.4.5
Events Manager – Version 5.6.1
Facebook Like Box Version 2.8.4
Facebook Open Graph, Google+ and Twitter Card Tags Version 1.6.3
Food and Drink Menu Version 1.4.2
Good Reviews for WordPress Version 1.2.1
Google Maps Embed Version 1.13
Light – Responsive LightBox Version 1.1
Link Manager Version 0.1-beta
My Custom CSS Version 1.5
NewStatPress Version 1.0.9
Ninja Forms Version 2.9.28
Restaurant Reservations Version 1.4.9
The items in the list for Site 1 with an * are on both sites.
There are plugins activated at the network level:
Advanced Automatic Updates
Capability Manager Enhanced
Dashboard Site Notes
Delete Expired Transients
Font Awesome More Icons
More Privacy Options
MultilingualPress
Multisite Plugin Manager
Multisite User Management
Network Plugin Auditor
NS Cloner – Site Copier
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)
Shortcodes in Sidebar Widgets
Simple Multisite Sitemaps
Theme Check
Ultimate Coming Soon Page
Use Google Libraries
User Activation Keys
User Session Control
User Switching
Widget Logic
Widgets Area Chooser
Most of those are multisite specific, but you may have seen them or know they cause conflicts with your setup.
I really want to thank you for pointing out the problem with Multisite Robots!!! It was wrong on so many levels. But now, I need to figure out what is causing the problem. I am using Cloudways as a hosting provider by the way.
Thanks!
You keep saying Apache errors. Are you looking at the WordPress log in wp-content/debug.log ?
What’s your PHP version?
I have nothing at all in debug.log I mentioned apache errors because that is what I was seeing.
PHP 5.4.45
You might have to take this up with Cloudways. Your PHP is simply crashing without any error message, hence the HTTP 503 from Apache. I’ve not heard of this before and it is most likely specific to your particular environment. PHP 5.4 is popular so it must be something else. Perhaps when Postman tries to create its lock file on the file system, there is some kind of security in place that kills the process.
I’m sorry. It it looks like Postman will not be a fit for you 🙁
