If you’ve ever encountered sporadic errors in your WordPress site then you’ve come to the right place. WordPress errors can be quite infuriating, but there’s always a way to overcome them – and in most cases, several different solutions exist, here’s the one for fix the internal server error.
Some users find that on trying to access their WordPress admin panel, they’re presented with an internal server error that goes something like this:
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
This particular error has people racking their brains out in hopes of figuring out what’s wrong with their site and how they can fix it. In this article, I’ll go over a few simple solutions you can try out to diagnose the error and resolve it.
Let’s get right to it!
How Does This Error Occur?
As the name suggests, internal server errors aren’t WordPress-specific errors. In fact, they can occur due to a fault with other services and software running on the same server as your WordPress site. Assuming you’re hosting on a shared server, internal server error in WordPress is more common than you might think.
The error itself and the message it displays is not specified at the very least. There’s practically no way of finding out exactly how the error came to be from reading the internal server error message. However, when this error occurs on a WordPress site, we can narrow down its causes to:
- Functions of themes.
- Functions of plugins.
- Corrupted .htaccess files.
- PHP memory limit reached.
More often than not, a user will be trying to access their WordPress admin area when they come across an internal server error. In such cases, it’s common for the rest of the website to work as usual while access to the site’s admin area is restricted.
Now let’s look at a few ways we can fix this issue.
How to Fix the Internal Server Error
As we discussed above, there’s no real way of finding out exactly what’s wrong with your WordPress site and why it’s giving an internal server error every time you try to log in to the WordPress admin area.
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
As Mr. Roosevelt ever so delicately puts it, we’ll apply the trial and error approach step-by-step to resolve this issue. If one method doesn’t fix it, move on to the next!
1. Ensure .htaccess File Works Properly to Fix WordPress Internal Server Error
The first thing we’re going to do is ensure our WordPress site’s .htaccess file isn’t corrupt and is doing what it’s intended to do. Follow these simple steps to check for your .htaccess file’s status:
- Login to your WordPress site’s FTP client.
- Navigate to the File Manager under the Files
- Find your site’s
.htaccessfile and rename it e.g..htaccess_original - Try accessing your website and the WordPress admin area.
- If everything works fine now, navigate to Settings > Permalinks from your site’s Dashboard.
- Click the Save button.
By saving these settings, you’ll generate a new .htaccess file that contains the correct rewrite rules. These new rules will guarantee that your site’s post pages don’t return errors when they’re accessed.
If your .htaccess the file was causing the internal server error, it should be fixed now. However, if you found the error was still in place on re-loading your site and WordPress admin area, then move on to the next step in which we’ll show you how to increase your site’s PHP memory limit.
2. Increase PHP Memory Limit
If the internal server error issue persists even after you’ve checked your .htaccess file then it could be because you’re hitting the memory limit. Often times when this is the case, you’ll also come across an error that reads:
The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini
when you’re trying to upload a file to your Media Library. Or perhaps it could be something more like this:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 1234567 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 87654321 bytes) in /home/your-username/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php on line 1234
Those of you who encounter this error every time you try logging into your site’s admin panel or uploading a file/image to your WordPress site can follow any of the following methods to increase the PHP memory limit. (Don’t let the codes scare you, I promise it’s not that hard!)
Editing Your wp-config.php File to Fix WordPress Internal Server Error
By adding this one line of code to your WordPress site’s wp-config.php file, you can increase the memory limit to a more suitable value. In the following steps, I’ve increased it to 64M (M stands for megabytes).
- Login to your WordPress site’s FTP client.
- Navigate to your site’s root directory and find the
wp-config.phpfile. - Inside the
<?phptag, add the following line of code:
This simple, one-liner is my go-to method whenever I have to increase the memory limit — it works every time!
Updating the php.ini File
If you have trouble finding the wp-config.php file, try looking for the php.ini file instead! This method goes a bit deeper into the memory limit by allowing you to increase several different values at the same time. Let’s take a look.
- Login to your cPanel and navigate to Files > File Manager.
- Find the wp-admin folder and locate your
php.inifile. (If the file doesn’t exist, create one by clicking on the New File button.) - Once you’ve found/created the file, open it and edit/add the following lines of code:
- Save the updated file and clear your browser’s cache.
Editing the .htaccess File
Assuming you were unable to locate the wp-config.php file or the php.ini file you can always alter the old .htaccess file by adding a few lines of code at the bottom. This method always works for me!
- Login to your WordPress site’s FTP client.
- Navigate to the File Manager under the Files
- Find your site’s
.htaccessfile and edit/add the following code at the end of the file:
- Save the updated file and clear your browser’s cache.
If you’re still not sure about getting into your site’s core files and updating them for whatever reason, you can alternatively install the Increase Max Upload Filesize plugin to get the job done.
These changes are easy to incorporate and will hopefully solve the internal server error you’re experiencing. Once you’re done increasing the PHP memory limit using any one of the three steps outlined above, try re-loading your WordPress site and accessing the admin area.
If you’re still prompted with the error screen then get ready for the next step — things are about to get serious now.
3. Deactivate Your Plugins to Fix WordPress Internal Server Error
At this stage, it’s safe to assume that you’re in for a lot of work. There’s a high chance that the error is caused by a plugin that you have installed on your WordPress site. Even plugins with great reviews and five-star ratings can be the root cause in this scenario. Here’s how:
- Scenario 1: Firstly, the plugin isn’t compatible with your version of WordPress.
- Scenario 2: Secondly, the plugin isn’t compatible with the theme you’re running.
- Scenario 3: Finally, the plugin isn’t compatible with another plugin you have installed.
Plugins extend and add to the functionality of your WordPress site. They’re fun to install, they save you a ton of time and make work super easy. The only problem is that they might end up causing errors — no matter how well they score. There is no pragmatic approach or a carefully laid out formula you can follow to avoid running into an internal server error with plugins. Ironically enough, finding such an error caused by a faulty plugin-plugin or plugin-theme combination is a trial-and-error technique in itself!
To resolve this issue, you’ll have to deactivate all of the plugins you have installed on your site and then activate them one by one all over again. Let’s simplify the process and give it some logical structure so it doesn’t seem as chaotic:
Using the WordPress Dashboard
The easiest way to deactivate all of your plugins is through your WordPress Dashboard.
Deactivate plugins from your WordPress Dashboard.
- Login to your WordPress site’s Dashboard.
- Navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins.
- Click the Deactivate link below each plugin.
However, if you can’t access your WordPress Dashboard, you can deactivate the plugins through an FTP client. Here’s how:
Using the FTP Client
Deactivating plugins using the FTP client isn’t as easy as through the Dashboard but it’s entirely possible.
Renaming the plugins folder.
- Login to your site’s FTP client or cPanel.
- Navigate to the
/wp-content/folder. - Find the plugins folder and rename it to deactivated plugins.
Once you do this, all of your site’s plugins will be deactivated. This approach is much faster but requires you to log into an FTP client or the file manager provided by your hosting service.
Once you’ve deactivated all of the plugins using either of the above-mentioned methods, it’s time to go back to your WordPress Dashboard and activate them again.
- Login to your WordPress site’s Dashboard.
- Navigate to Plugins > Installed Plugins.
- Starting from the top, click the Activate link below the first plugin.
- Reload your site and the admin area to ensure it still works.
- If your site and admin area work i.e. they don’t give an internal server error, continue to activate the next plugin.
- If your site or admin area crashes, you’ll know that the last activated plugin is causing the internal server error.
Once you find the faulty plugin, deactivate it once again and report it to the plugin’s author, if possible, along with a list of plugins you have installed, the theme you’re currently running, and your WordPress site’s version.
Note: It’s important that you re-activate all of your plugins one by one even after you’ve found the faulty plugin. It’s possible that more than one plugin caused the error due to incompatibility issues.
4. Contact Your Hosting Provider
Here you are seemingly all out of options to fix the dreadful internal server error on your WordPress site. What do you do when you can’t do something about it yourself?
If you recall, we started out by explaining what an internal server error actually is and stated that it occurs on the server level. The best thing to do at this stage is to contact your hosting provider and report the issue to them. Your hosting providers have access to the server error logs on which your WordPress site is hosted. They can go through the logs, identify when and how the issue occurred, and hopefully do something about it.
There are a few things you should definitely mention in your email to the hosting provider:
- Your website’s URL.
- When you first came across the internal server error.
- What you were trying to access when you came across the error e.g. the website, the admin area, etc.
- The list of plugins you have installed on your site.
- The theme you’re currently running.
- The version of your WordPress site.
- How you’ve tried to rectify the problem yourself.
Between the information you give and whatever they find in the server error logs, you can rest assured that your site will be up and running without any errors in no time.
In the worst case, if they are unable to solve the problem, they’ll, at least, be able to offer you advice and suggest appropriate measures you can take to resolve the issue altogether.
Wrapping It Up
There you have it — three simple, sequential techniques you can adopt to solve the internal server error on your WordPress site. The internal server error is quite common in WordPress sites, especially if your site is hosted on a shared platform.
We provided three quick solutions to fix the error and depending upon the root cause, one of them should work for you. Hopefully, you’re in a better place now to take things further and try out the techniques explained in this article.
Have you ever encountered an internal server error? How did you fix it? Did any of the techniques we detailed above help you resolve the issue? Let us know in the comments section below and if you have more issues with your WordPress take a look here.
