Dealing With Internal Server Issues — When the web server coughs up error code 500

(Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes)

Ever get one of these?

Check your server error log. If you are hosted with bluehost.com, you will be running the Apache server, and your error log* will look something like this:


[2009-03-18 12:02:37]: error: file is writable by others: (/home/howtopla/public_html/wordpress/wp-admin/tools.php)
[2009-03-18 11:59:09]: error: file is writable by others: (/home/howtopla/public_html/wordpress/wp-admin/update-core.php)


Wrong permissions will produce a 500 server error when using the new WordPress 2.7 automatic updating feature when update-core.php has file permissions 666 instead of 644.

Here’s two more examples:

• wp-db-backup failed on wp-admin/tools.php permissions: had to change from 666 to 644.
• 500 errors can also occur when using the automatic plugin installation feature of WordPress. In this case, ensure that wp-admin/index.php is set to 644.

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Tagged as: 500 Server Error, File permissions