Change to permalinks in Wordpress blog resulted in 500 Internal Server Error
I'm not sure if this is a Linode-side issue, or a Wordpress-side one, so I'm posting here and there in the hopes that someone can help me. Tonight I was tinkering with my blog, which I updated a couple of days ago to the latest release. I run it on Ubuntu. I'm not very experienced with working in the command line, but I usually manage with the basics such as updating the server software and doing Wordpress installs.
So today after playing with some new themes and plugins, I decided to check out Yoast's SEO tool which runs fine. One of the recommendations was to change my permalinks from the default to another format. I chose the %post_name% one as I thought it looked the tidiest.
As soon as I hit submit, I was thrown to a 500 internal server error and can now no longer access either the site or the admin interface. I have searched online for about two hours trying to figure out the problem.
I can see the htaccess file on my server using WinSCP FTP but I am denied editing or deletion access (despite being the owner of the site). I believe this may be due to some root access changes that were recommended in the command line about a year back. Essentially I use a super user account to do everything in command line and the root user was subsumed by that. I was not happy about that, but didn't know how to reverse it (and thus take full responsibility!) So anyway, I think that might be why I can't edit the htaccess file (or CHMOD it).
I checked the wp_options table in the database using MySQL as I saw mention of a possible permalinks value that I could change, but that field value is not listed.
I should point out I do have an exported backup file of the blog from a few days ago (the 10th), so if I can get back into the admin interface, I could restore that. It's just getting back in there that is the problem!
So now I turn to you, wonderful Linode community, in the hopes that you might have some suggestions on how I can get my beloved blog back.
1 Reply
One way or the other you can delete the file, login to admin, do the permalinks again and see if the site writes the htaccess file.
Sounds like you need to get the permissions straight or this may happen again.