I’m sick today, so I’m chillin’ in bed today on my laptop. I wanna’ be productive but I also wanna’ watch TV. Our “TV” is driven completely by the internet though. In the living room, we use a media center computer connected to a TV. We watch TV and movies from Hulu (through the program Hulu Desktop) and from Netflix (through the program like Boxee).
I have a media center computer in the bed room connected to our bed room TV, but it’s lacking a decent video card, so when me or my girl wanna’ watch TV in the bed room, we watch from our laptops.
That’s what I was doing last night and today, while sick. But since I wanna’ do some stuff done online, via my laptop, then I can’t watch TV. Or can I? I decided I can do both by simply putting Hulu Desktop in the top half of the screen and putting everything else (Google Chrome) in the bottom half. And it surprising works out great. Normally, when in the living room working from my laptop, I’d have something on Hulu Desktop on the TV and look back and forth between the laptop screen and the TV. Well I’m doin’ now the same thing, lookin’ towards the bottom half of the screen and the top half of the screen. And what’s funny is that the size of the TV window is about the same size as the living room TV’s point of view size when sitting on the couch.
It’s a really great experience. I’m diggin’ it. talk about bein’ productive while veggin’ out.
Peace, JbB
Posted in Tips on 14. Jan, 2010
So I’m chillin’ on the couch tonight, watchin’ TV via Hulu, and I get an email from someone that my iPhone blog web site theneocell.com, powered by Wordpress was down. I checked it out and sure enough, I was getting a “500 Internal Server Error”. Crap… I had just listed an iPhone I was selling (the Neocell 2G) on eBay, and that must have caused too much activity and made the database shutdown. Or possibly my whole server? That seemed impossible, so I loaded aintageek.com and it was working fine. I then loaded up theneocell.com from the Neocell itself, my iPhone, and the special iPhone version loaded up just fine. It dawned on me what happened. So now, I’m going to tell you how to fix your 500 internal server error with Wordpress.
Your File Server And Database Server Are Seperate
When you get this error, it mean that your SQL server isn’t keep up with the demand of your SQL database and your SQL server is running out of memory. Your SQL database is where all your content is saved and retrieved from, including comments, settings, plug-in configuration, ect. That data isn’t written to a file on your server like Microsoft Word writes files to your computer, that data is instead added to a database that, for most of us, isn’t part of our server files. It exists in a database system on a different server of our hosting provider, and we share the same database server with other people. Even if you’ve got a big, beefy, premium package server, like I do, that package is for your “files” alone (the “OS” of Wordpress, images, video, etc). But the actual text content isn’t linked to your server package and can suffer by running out of memory. Someone else’s SQL database can cause your own database to run out of memory and return a 500 internal server error, or you can cause your own to run out of memory and return a 500 internal sever error, like what happened to theneocell.com.
Solution For 500 Internal Server Error Wordpress
It’s real, real simple. Open your favorite text editor and type
memory=20MB
Then save that file as “php.ini” in your “wp-admin” folder and upload. That’s it.
Why php.ini Fixes Your Problem
The reason why this fixes your problem is because it tells your SQL database server to give you more memory. Not having enough memory can cause your error on doing admin things, uploading images, etc. If you use Google Site Maps, like I do, this puts your database through more work and a file like this is needed to make sure your database server understands your database is complex and to give it more memory. Otherwise, you can not even use 1% of your server’s bandwidth, but max out your SQL database server.
I had this issue more than a year ago and fixed it, but after a recent upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress, I forgot to reupload this file. That’s how I was able to imidiately understand what the problem was. When I looked for the php.ini file on the server and couldn’t find it, I reuploaded it and problem was solved instantly. Now yours will be too.
Update: Editing .htaccess also
You need to edit .htaccess, because you can still get the error if you haven’t modified it also.
Open your .htaccess. It should look like this.
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
Add this below “</IfModule>” and above “# END WordPress”.
Options All -Indexes
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
So your file should look like this:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
Options All -Indexes
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
# END WordPress
Modifying .htaccess is very, very important and the file gets replaced after each Wordpress upgrade, to remember to keep modifying it, or your 500 server error can creep back at’cha.
If I helped you out, say thanks below or follow me on twitter @johnBbaird.
Peace, JbB
