- Is your blog site returning the infamous “500 – internal server error” more often than not?
- Are you using WordPress as your blog publishing platform?
- Are you using GoDaddy as your website hosting provider?
- Are you using IIS as your web server (as opposed to Linux)?
If yes, continue reading to fix this issue:
There is weird configuration issue with running WordPress with a IIS web server on GoDaddy. Taking the following actions will resolve this issue:
- Upgrade WordPress to the latest version. Detailed instructions at: Upgrading WordPress
-
Install WP-Super-Cache plugin. Here is the download link for it. In order to enable the plugin, you have to do a little tweaking. Below are the steps you need to follow:
- First off, extract the ‘wp-super-cache’ folder into your ‘wp-content/plugins’ directory.
- Log in to your GoDaddy account and navigate to Hosting -> Manage Account.
- Click on the Content tab and select File Manager.
- Here you will see all your files and folders. Check the wp-content folder and click the Permissions icon on the top. Uncheck Inherit and check the Read and Write checkboxes. Don’t worry this is only temporary to get your plugin working correctly. Save your changes.
- Now Enable the plugin by going to your WordPress Plugins page.
- Next you will have to enable caching. For this, go back to your File Manager and browse to the “wp-content/cache” folder. Change the permissions on this folder to Read/Write as well.
- Now open up the wp-config.php page that’s in the root directory and add the following line towards the end: define(‘WP_CACHE’, true)
- Go back to the Settings page for the wp-super-cache plugin and set the status to ON. Make sure to save your settings. You may see a warning about apache mod_rewrite not enable or installed. Don’t worry about this warning. This just means that your caching will only be HALF-ON which is fine because even it being HALF-ON will fix our ’500 – internal error’ issue.
- Go back to the File Manager and change the permissions on the wp-content folder to Inherit.
- Your website should now respond faster and stop generating the 500 – internal server error issue.
- As an additional security measure, I would also recommend installing the WP-SpamFree plugin. This is a very effective plugin that will eliminate virtually all SPAM comments. Thus decreasing the load on your website.
If that still doesn’t fix the “500 internal server error” issue, then try updating your current WordPress theme or switch to a different WordPress theme. If that doesn’t work either, then it’s time to bite the bullet and switch to Linux! 
I’m having the error, and was trying out your solution until I got to the part that says to activate the plugin. The issue is, I have a 500 error which means I can’t get into the site or any admin areas. Any suggestions?
The 500 error should go away after a while and then come back again. But if not then you can restart your web-app by logging into your GoDaddy account and then navigating to Manage Account and somewhere in there there should be an option “Recyle App Pool”. I actually tried several things to avoid the 500 internal error on Windows Hosting but all to no avail. I finally switched to Linux hosting, deleted and reinstalled the WP Super Cache plugin and haven’t had any problems ever since. So my recommendation – switch to Linux! Be sure to back up for your files and WordPress DB before the switch as a security measure. Hope this helps!
Thanks.
But I never found: “Next you will have to enable caching. For this, go back to your File Manager and browse to the “wp-content/cache” folder. Change the permissions on this folder to Read/Write as well”
Did everything else. Still nothing. Meant be a windows/godaddy issue. I give up for now.
did any one get success by this method ? ? ? ? I tried but it does not at all
Yes, it working for me but I went ahead and switched to Linux anyways!
any issue there??
Nope. Works beautifully!