Site entirely broken

  • Hey guys,

    So I recently purchased a WordPress website and transferred the domain over to Bluehost from whatever host the previous owner had.

    The site was working great for about a week, and my domain transfer completed yesterday, but today there was an error.

    I believe it was a conflict with an SSL plugin that was installed, but my site was blocked by all browsers for having HSTS but not being able to validate the certificate. I think in the “settings” section in my admin dashboard the site URL wasn’t set to https, but instead http.

    Regardless, I couldn’t access my site or admin dashboard at all, no matter what I did.

    Then, for some reason, it started showing that there was no index.php. I copied over the index.php from one of my other sites, and now I’m getting a 500 error on my site. Nothing is loading at all.

    I’ve contacted the previous owner to try and set up a transferring of site files over to Bluehost (I neglected to do that earlier), because as it stands now I can’t access any site files since I don’t have access to them. That means no uninstalling of the problem plugin(s).

    Is there anything else I can do? I’ve been struggling to find someone that had a similar problem.

    Thanks so much

    The website is thenaturetrail.com, by the way.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Internal server errors (error 500) are often caused by plugin or theme function conflicts, so if you have access to your Dashboard, try deactivating all plugins. If you don’t have access to your Dashboard, 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 Nineteen theme to rule-out a theme-specific issue. If you don’t have access to your Dashboard, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel (consult your hosting provider’s documentation for specifics on these), 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 specific time period. If you don’t have access to your server error log, ask your hosting provider to look for you.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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