Internal server errors (error 500) are often caused by plugin or theme function conflicts, so if you have access to your admin panel, try deactivating all plugins. If you don’t have access to your admin panel, try manually resetting your plugins (no Dashboard access required). If that resolves the issue, reactivate each one individually until you find the cause.
If that does not resolve the issue, try switching to the Twenty Sixteen theme to rule-out a theme-specific issue. If you don’t have access to your admin panel, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel, navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. This will force the default theme to activate and hopefully rule-out a theme-specific issue.
If that does not resolve the issue, it’s possible that a .htaccess rule could be the source of the problem. To check for this, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel, and rename the .htaccess file. If you can’t find a .htaccess file, make sure that you have set your SFTP or FTP client to view invisible files.
If you weren’t able to resolve the issue by either resetting your plugins and theme or renaming your .htaccess file, we may be able to help, but we’ll need a more detailed error message. Internal server errors are usually described in more detail in the server error log. If you have access to your server error log, generate the error again, note the date and time, then immediately check your server error log for any errors that occurred during that time period. If you don’t have access to your server error log, ask your hosting provider to look for you.
I appreciate the help James, but perhaps I misused the terminology when I said localhost. What I meant was that it’s not been uploaded anywhere, this is basically a sandbox run on my own computer.
That aside, I tried to do what I could of your suggestions and found that my wp_options was corrupted – I have now repaired it and can access my Dashboard! Hurrah!
Unfortunately, having logged in, I have found that it is the default theme and none of my changes are present – where have they all gone? 🙁 Do I have to start from scratch? I did make a backup previously with a plugin, I will try to figure it out and use that.
[The following is for posterity and for any users who have the same issues as I did and so they do not have to suffer unnecessarily as I did ]
Using phpmyAdmin, I accessed my database (default is ‘wordpress’) and tried to open wp_options and found that it was corrupted. So, I just selected it (checkbox) and from the dropdown menu, selected ‘Repair table’ and voila!
Following up on my inability to run a second ‘fresh install’ of Instant WP running into the same error, it turns out that in my Task Manager (access via ctrl+alt+del > Start Task Manager) even after closing Instant WP, it was still running in the background in ‘Processes’. All I did was just select it (and I selected instances of Apache SQL or something too for good measure) and clicked ‘End Process’. I was then able to run and open my clean install of Instant WP.
Stay tuned to see if I get my website back!
Thanks for sharing your solution!
