Error 500

Hi diancala,
a 500 error comes from your server – not HD Quiz or even WordPress. This means that it is possible that there is a larger problem here with an issue/misconfiguration of your server.

There are two possibilities: There is either a rogue plugin (or theme function) that is modifying a core WordPress function in a very bad way, or your server is missing crucial and important PHP extensions.

The first thing to try is to enable WP_DEBUG. This will try and show any errors on your site. With a bit of luck, instead of seeing the 500 error, you will see an actual error message. If this happens, please post the error message here and I can further help. WP_DEBUG can be set to true by editing your wp-config.php file located in the location you installed WordPress.

If you are unable to enable debug or enabling it does not show any extra messages when previewing a post with a quiz, then we can do the generic WordPress testing.

Start by disabling ALL plugins except HD Quiz and see if you still get the 500 error. If you no longer get the error, then we know that the cause is one of the plugins you disabled. Re-enable them one by one until it breaks again and we find the offending plugin. You can also do the same check with your theme by switching to the default twenty-twenty theme and see if that fixes it as well.

If you STILL cannot figure this out, then you will need to contact your host directly, as it would indicate that the issue is fully on their end. They should be able to check their own error logs to see what is misconfigured your account and fix it for you.

Good luck and please keep me in the loop if you find any error messages or figure out if it’s another plugin causing this!

Hi, I have done what you said and have not been able to see the error. Disable the plugins and it was not solved either. Also check my logs and there is no error. (I did not change the theme of the site)

Contact my hosting and they say they don’t have any plugin errors in their records.

I send you information about my site, maybe it can be useful.

iNFO

iNFO

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by diancala.

Hmmm this is a tricky one!

Just to confirm, you edited wp-config.php and set the WP_DEBUG to true?

I still recommend switching to a default WP theme just so we can know 100% if the issue is theme related or not. If you don’t want to switch themes even for a minute, then you can try this:

If you go to the theme selector, you should be able to preview a theme. Perhaps you can temporarily publish a page with a quiz on it then use the theme preview to navigate to it to see if it still results in the server error. This way you won’t have to actually switch themes (I have not tried this before though).

The logs that your host would be looking at would not have anything to do with WP plugins but would be about missing or improperly configured PHP modules. (note – you might be able to see some error logs in your public_html folder. worth a shot if it exits)

One thing to try is to log into your cpanel account and use the PHP Selector to change your PHP version to something different. The issue could be a corrupt installation of your current 7.3.23 or something. I’d recommend 7.4 if it is available to you. I’ve seen cases where some hosting accounts don’t properly set the PHP modules when upgrading, so this might fix it if that’s the case.

Other than that I’m afraid I’m out of ideas. Almost 7000 active users and this is the first time I’ve heard of anyone having this issue! HD Quiz uses the native WordPress function for queries and doesn’t really do anything special other than that when displaying a quiz – nothing that could cause a 500 internal server error at least. Since we know there is not a conflict with another plugin, we are left with the issue either being your theme, or a server configuration issue.

Thanks for all the recommendations. I have done the test with the Twenty Twenty theme and the quiz works correctly. Could it be a problem with my Gridlove theme?

Unfortunately, that confirms that the issue is your theme – not HD Quiz OR your server.

There is nothing I can do to help you with that as your theme must be doing something to default and native WordPress functions used by HD Quiz that is crashing your site.

The only recommendations I can give are to:

1. Check with the theme author to see if there is an update available for the theme. Perhaps they’ve already fixed the underlying issue.
2. Contact the theme author and let them know of the issue. Looking the theme up, it seems like a pretty good theme – so I’m sure the authors will be able to track down the issue for you and provide solutions.

Best of luck and thank you for taking the time to go through all of these steps. We now at least know where this issue is coming from. Please feel free to also keep me updated if you uncover any new information that could be useful.

Thanks for your time. I just updated the Gridlove theme to its latest version and HD Quiz keeps causing the problem. I will contact the developers of the theme.