Enabled Permalinks, now getting 500 Internal error

Sorry, this is a WP 2.6.2 blog. The address is https://www.therybaks.com if you want to see the error.

You can get 500 errors if you have a mistake in your .htaccess. Switch to default permalinks (if you can) and either delete or rename your .htaccess to something else. Then check out:

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Using_Permalinks

I can’t get to the admin page. Is there another way to switch to default permalinks?

you can delete the current .htaccess file using FTP – take it off the server and you should be able to get into admin just fine.

In fact, the fact that you *can’t* log into admin is weird. This shouldn’t affect the admin area at all.

Did you get this resolved? I can see the site (and the admin login page) just fine. if you did, please post the resolution for future queries, and mark it as resolved.

Sorry. Yes, I got it working per iridiax’s instructions. I logged in via FTP, deleted the .htaccess file and it let me in. I have spent the last several hours recreating the work that was lost since the last backup (I learned my lesson there… no more tinkering without making a full backup).

Thank you for the quick help!

I had the same problem after enabling permalinks.
My site was running on a virtual dedicated server and was not the main site.
I had to delete the .htaccess in the root of my web server, and in the root of the affected site’s folder, and this fixed the problem.
Site was teachmewp.com and I had to delete:
/public_html/.htaccess
and
/public_html/teachmewp/.htaccess

I hope this helps the next person who has this problem. This was the first thread that came up when I searched.

Now I’ve got to go figure out what was wrong with my .htaccess files.

I thought I’d share some of my issues and the possible fixes I discovered in talking with my domain host. I’ve listed the problems I encountered in order over the span of about 3 months.

1) Live Writer returned the “500 error” anytime I tried to upload a post with pictures or attachments. I incorrectly assumed it was my xmlrpc file.
2) Dashboard widgets would sometimes load and other times only 1 or 2 would load.
3) Manually creating posts in WP would generate “500 error” but the post still went thru.
4) Unable to upload any media files thru WP.

My ISP proposed a variety of answers so I thought I’d share all of them. This is, of course, assuming your write permissions are set correctly for your WP directory.

1) Disable and test plug-ins. This is particularly important if you use plugins that restrict views or categories based on users logged in or not. Sometimes, they create their own .htaccess files which causes problems if you upgrade, downgrade, or remove the plugin. You should have one .htaccess file in your root blog directory. Any others in other sub directories should be suspect. Check the plugin vendors instructions for a fix.

2) The file upload size for your server is set too low and the 500 error is returned as a result. Your host can change this if you don’t know how. It takes all of 5 minutes. I didn’t realize my host has a default setting of 10megs.

3) If your hosting provider is running multiple versions of PHP, you’ll definitely need this fix for WP v2.7 and above. Your .htaccess file has to call for the newer version of PHP.

Note – If you are using default permalinks, you may not have a .htaccess file at all. WP only creates it when you change the default handling of how it processes files/links. You’ll have to manually create one in this instance. https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Using_Permalinks

Use “AddType x-mapp-php5 .php” without the quotes and note the spacing between the 5 and the dot is correct, do not remove it. Also, add this to your .htaccess file AT THE VERY BEGINNING, even before the “#Begin WordPress” comment.

Apparently, PHP v5.0 has significant improvements in rendering w/o extra server load so ISP’s may throttle your backend use to encourage you to upgrade. NOTE – If your host is only using one version of PHP, DON’T DO THIS, IT WILL CAUSE MORE PROBLEMS.

*I’ve posted this on a few different threads, apologies if you get this more than once*