When using WordPress, an error is no longer strange to everyone, which is the 500 Internal Server Error. This is a fairly common error for WordPress, this error can happen to any website on your server. And one thing that annoys us is that this is a very general message, it does not give us any information about the error or how to fix it.

With line Internal Server Error always make users think that 100% of the server is at fault, but that’s not the case. Let AZDIGI learn the cause and how to fix it.

Table of Contents

I. Causes of 500 Internal Server Error on WordPress

After many times of processing support, I have concluded that some of the most common causes for this error are

File .htaccess error, or some configuration files in the file cause errors
Limited PHP memory
Plugin conflict error
Error from Theme
WordPress core error
Malicious code on the website
Error in software and services on the server
Server is overloaded

The above are the most common mistakes that I have learned from working experience and handling. And when you have filtered the causes, you can fix them as follows:

II. Fix 500 Internal Server Error on WordPress

Because it’s a common error, we can’t handle it right away, but we need to check each part according to the main reasons we listed above.

1. Handling .htaccess files

The first thing to do is to disable the contents of the current .htaccess file, and replace it with the default WordPress template content.

You go inside the source code, open the file .htaccess then delete the old content and enter the new content as follows

Note: If .htaccess you have separate configured segments you should back them up for reuse.

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^.well-known/acme-challenge/ - [L]
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R]
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

2. PHP Memory Limited

The 500 Internal Server Error above can also occur when your PHP memory is exhausted. And you can increase these limits inside your server with values like:

memory_limit
max_execution_time
max_input_vars

3. Error from Plugin

This is the most common cause for this 500 Internal Server Error. Try disabling all Plugins then visit the website to see if that fixes it.

If you no longer have access to the WordPress admin to disable the Plugin you can disable it by renaming the folder plugins in wp-contens with a different name.

4. Theme mail error

Just like Plugins, if you can’t access the admin, please go to wp-contents/themes then rename the old theme folder to see if it can fix the error or not. If after renaming the theme and you are back inside the wordpress admin, please activate a wordpress original theme to use for error handling.

5. Error from WordPress core

Core WordPress is also one of the causes of error 500 that I have ever dealt with. You can back up the folder containing the web content and replace the WordPress core as follows:

Step 1: Backup wp-conten folder

Please download this folder or rename the folder directly on the host to any name

Step 2: Remove the current WordPress core

Please tick all files and exclude folders wp-content and files wp-config.php out. Then delete all remaining files.

Step 3: Download the new WordPress core to use

Please download the new WordPress core and extract it to use. After unzipping, don’t forget to move the files of the core WordPress directory outside the directory where the source code is stored.

Then you delete the folder wp-content just unzipped. And rename the file wp-content.bak about wp-content to use.

And now, please visit the website to try and check that after replacing the core, the web is working again.

6. Malicious code on the website

Malware can be considered a very difficult problem to handle, and is also one of the causes of web errors. Currently, on AZDIGI hosting, there is a malware scanning application available, you can log in to cPanel hosting, go to cPGuard => VIRUS SCANNER => SCANNER LOGS, you will see a message about malicious code as shown below.

And with the malicious web, there is no resource to guide you to thoroughly handle it. Instead, you should immediately contact reputable web design units for processing support and of course you will have to pay some costs for this. But on the contrary, your website is up and running again, which is a very happy thing.

7. Error in software and services on the server

In addition, there are also the last 2 errors that rarely happen, which are service errors and overloaded servers. Because in a host or server there are many websites and some websites have 500 Internal Server Error above, this case can be excluded.

But if all the websites on the host/server are the same, then you need to check the PHP service and the webserver on this server.

8. Server is overloaded (overloaded)

When your server is overloaded by causes such as (ddos, application software conflicts, service crashes) it can also happen to the website. But usually this error is very rare and you can check the server status with the command top -c or htop then see the load average

For cPanel, you can directly view the status of the server’s services in the Service Information section. If all are green ticks ✅ it means your server is working very well.

Hopefully this article helps you better understand the 500 Internal Server Error error on WordPress and thereby help you to promptly fix this problem on your website,

You can refer to other user guides at the link below:

If you need assistance, you can contact support in the ways below:

Instructions to fix 500 Internal Server Error on WordPress

I. Causes of 500 Internal Server Error on WordPress