500 error when trying to access WordPress site

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 Fifteen 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.

Thanks for your quick reply.

I’ve tried downloading the ‘phpmyadmin’ tool but the application isn’t opening/launching – there is just a bunch of folders in the download. Is there a way that I can directly talk to someone to resolve this issue? This website is imperative for the business and I would really appreciate it if it could be solved as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance.

Hi @oliviaac,

www.ads-software.com support is volunteer based, so there’s no direct line of contact as such.

If you feel more comfortable hiring someone you could always look at jobs.wordpress.net, but we’ll be more than happy to assist you over here.

Does your host provide you with any tools such as cPanel or similar which has a file manager module?

if so you can use that to go into the folder named wp-content and renaming plugins to something like plugins.old and seeing if your page loads.

If you are on a host that doesn’t provide you with a panel, and you don’t feel comfortable trying to utilize tools such as FTP, you can usually call the host or open a ticket with them and they should be able to help you do these steps and locate the cause (if they are uncertain of what to do you could link them to this thread as well)