500 Internal server errors are pretty common which represent a HTTP status code consisting of a three-digit number. While it isn’t much difficult to understand, often these errors and numbers drive people crazy and lead them to panic.

Such error can either be Global or might just be limited to your desktop or machine only.  Such errors can be resolved very easily without panicking about it.

Before we learn more about fixing 500 internal server errors, we will need to know what are these HTTP status codes. When a request returns from server to client, it consists of these codes. Some common HTTP code errors are 503 service unavailable error and 404 not found error.

When it comes to internal server error 500, a lot of people claim it to be very difficult to understand the cause of these errors since 500 server internal error can be caused by a lot of factors.

However, we have always tried to make things easier for our users.

And we have divided the causes into sub-points which can make it easier for you to locate the cause and fix the issue.

How to Fix 500 Internal Server Error?

As we said earlier that we have divided the causes into sub-points to make it easier for you to locate the issue.

First, you will need to check if the 500 internal server error is global or just limited to you.

• Global: When we say global, we mean that everyone is facing the same issue.
• Limited: When we say limited, it means that the issue exists just for you and it works perfectly fine for others.

In order to check if their issue is global or limited, if you facing this issue on a website, click on this link and enter the website link. If it shows the same 500 internal server error, the issue is Global and exists for all. Whereas, if it returns the website layout correctly, the issue is just specific to you.

In case, if you are facing this issue on a server or something which is not a website,  consider the issue as global.

• Fixing HTTP error 500 if it is limited just to you:

In this case, you can try clearing your Browser Cache.

You can follow the steps below to clean your Browser Cache

• Cleaning Browser Cache on Google Chrome/Chromium/Brave Browser

1.  Press CTRL + H
2. Click on ‘Clear Browsing Data’ on top left
3. Once you click on it, a new tab will open and click on Clear Data

• Clear your browser Cache of Mozilla Firefox

1.  Press CTRL + SHIFT + DELETE
2. Change time range to Everything
3. Make Sure Cookies and Cache are selected
4. Click OK

This method may vary depending on the browser you are using. But all browsers provide an option to clear cache in their browser settings. So it will be worth checking out your browser settings.

• Fixing HTTP error 500 globally

Since the error exists from the server-side, you will need access to the server or Admin panel.

Once you have access to your File Manager where your files are hosted or Admin Panel, the following steps can fix the issue.

1. Permission Error: There are chances that permission for Core files like .htaccess is either changed or tampered. It is suggested to set the .htaccess file permission to ‘660’ and reset permission for all files and folders. The method or process to change permissions of a folder will vary from control panel to control panel. We would suggest you to first change the permissions of .htaccess to ‘660’ first.  If that doesn’t solve the 500 internal server error, process to the next solution. However, if you are facing the issue on IIS, try looking for the solution by fixing permissions for the ‘www’ folder. Permissions for Web directory and ‘web.config’ would matter the most for IIS users.
2. Error in .htaccess: One of the most major causes of 500 internal server error is misconfiguration or errors in the .htaccess file. It is good if you can find the errors in the .htaccess file. Or you can delete the .htacess file and create a new one. We have mentioned an entire way to create a .htaccess file for WordPress down below. If you are using some other CMS, you should search online for the same.
3. External Resource Timeout: A lot of times, servers wait for an external source or remote to confirm a request. After a timeout limit, the server would return an internal server error 500. This issue can be fixed by increasing timeout values or resetting the timeout settings. Typically, these settings won’t change by themselves.
4. Uncommon Cause for WordPress: This is one of the most uncommon causes of 500 internal server errors but this happens. Users usually installs very unoptimized or nulled plugins on their websites. The same could go for themes as well. Which leads to 500 internal server errors. Even some Page Builders are known to cause the same issue. We would suggest you to try disabling the plugins and themes including page builders to see if that resolves the issue. Since you don’t have access to the WordPress dashboard, you can log in to your file manager and rename each plugin and theme folder from ‘xyz’ to ‘xyz_old’. And if this issue isn’t resolved, you can change their name back to ‘xyz’ from ‘xyz_old’. Folders for all of your plugins and themes will be under WP-Content where you have installed WordPress. For cPanel, WordPress is by default installed in a folder named ‘Public_html’. Whereas for Plesk, WordPress is by default installed in a folder name ‘httpdocs’.

• How to Create a new .htacesss for WordPress

Delete the Old .htaccess from your Local Directory where your files are hosted and then create a new file with name ‘.htacess’. Once created, click on it to edit. On some control panels, users will have to right-click first and select edit to edit the file.

Once in edit mode, paste the following code and you should be good to go.

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPres

• None of the Solution Woking?

In this case, we would suggest you to contact our customer support. Users can Call us, Create Ticket from their dashboard, email or Chat via the Live Chat option.

Contacting your Web Hosting would be the best option.