500 Internal Server Error

I spoke with Dreamhost support via live chat on at least 6 different occasions and each time I was told something different. I have to say that Spencer was much more helpful and as previously mentioned we have used the Feed Them Social plugin on many websites. Dreamhost is the only provider that all of a sudden has issues.

@alysania, I would recommend you are back in touch with Dreamhost and inquiry as to whether or not the mysql server your WordPress site is on is functioning properly.

In addition, try and disable all other plugins and use one of the default themes to ensure it is nothing to do with your other plugins or theme used. I imagine Dreamhost is the culprit but that is where you should start before you go back to them and ask “Now what!?”

Yeah, I think the live chat is for the small stuff. The chat agent I spoke with said to submit a ticket so that it can be investigated. I gather they can’t quite deal with oddball stuff like this in chat which is understandable since it’s probably not an easy fix and someone is going to have to spend some serious time on figuring out what happened. I have to wonder if other users are having related errors since it’s really odd that it’s *just* this plugin that’s having an issue.

@alysania It’s possible that our plugin is the only one you have installed that is trying to reach outside API’s to retrieve information. The failure to retrieve that information within Dreamhosts 30 seconds limit is the issue. But in reality there is noooo way our plugin should take that long to retrieve the API info.

Spencer

I do have the Shareaholic plugin installed (buttons at the bottom of a post that allow a reader to share the post), and that’s behaving fine, no errors in the PHP log. I think it calls out to retrieve share counts from G+, twitter, etc, but admittedly, the nuts and bolts of how this stuff works is a little beyond my skill level!

Same boat as everyone else. Dreamhost is the provider, recent PHP and WordPress updates broke about 15 sites of which 4-5 of them had FTS and all of them broke. Was able to get sites back up and running WITHOUT FTS. Dreamhost says plugin creator is at fault for token taking too long to access and they have left me without a solution. ??

I’m not getting much help either – they just keep increasing the PHP max_execution_time and telling me to delete inactive plugins.

This is a crappy issue no doubt and I know how frustrating things like this can be. Hopefully a resolution will arise soon.

Interesting dreamhost says it’s our fault when it would appear that only clients from Dreamhost are reporting this issue so far. I’ve counted about 5 now.

I’m almost positive at this point though that this is a server issue. Especially if you are on a shared server. If just one person on that server spikes the resources or multiple people are using max resources on that server it will cause timeout issues. This problem dates back to 2007 for Dreamhost. When doing a google search for “dreamhost servers timing out” it yields many results of people complaining about this issue. https://discussion.dreamhost.com/thread-76785.html

In my experience with servers maxing out like this they need to cut back the amount of people they have on each server or add more hardware to speed the server up or fix some other underlying problem.

Spencer

Spencer – I don’t blame you. I think it’s Dreamhost’s way of pushing people onto more expensive pricey servers.

That Dreamhost discussion thread URL won’t load for me… Dreamhost at fault once again? Perhaps they are following this and took the page down!?!?

Sad part is, Dreamhost is having all sorts of issues. Now all of my sites are unreachable as DNS is broken it would appear. My issues immediately started happening AFTER they moved me to a new shared server. I had been on a previously shared server named Bellichin. Now I have close to 40 websites that are all down. Sweeeeet!

Do you mind sharing the name of your new shared server space? Wondering whether or not I should panic…

and now, is it Strawberry?

I’m currently on Brightwood. Bellichin was awesome and worked perfect.

Thank you for sharing, I need to confirm what we are on but I know that the two Dreamhost hosted sites we had issues with were on different shared servers. Unfortunately there seems to be some universal underlying issue over there…

@jrhaile Oh I didn’t really think you were I was just trying to give some clarity to the issue since I know how hosting companies can be so vague when it comes to technical hardware problems of this sort.

Glad to see at least you guys are seeing the underlying problem and able to help each other with server names to identify the problem child! Hoping they fix you guys up soon so you can use our plugin ??

Spencer