500 Internal Server Error after Register dialog, but with successful registration

Question

I get a 500 Internal Server error if I try to register a new user. This user will be created successfully, but I don't want that my users will see the error page and, therefore, think that something went wrong.

My WordPress is hosted in a subdirectory of my institutions web page (e.g., www.page.com/path/WordPress). The installation itself is in the /var/www directory on an Ubuntu in a VirtualBox image.

It seems that 500 Internal Server errors are quite common, but I didn't found a working solution for me in the web. Most discussions recommend to do one of the following things:

• Disable all plugins
• Change to default theme
• Checked Apache2 log
• Checked PHP log

I tried them all, bot none works for me. Has somebody an additional recommendation?

Answer 1

Internal Server errors are usually thrown when there's an error somewhere in the code. You did the right thing searching the logs, but depending on your hosting configuration not all errors can be written there.

I like using WordPress's own logging facility. Here's what you need to do:

Stick the following lines in your wp-config.php file

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);

Next time you get an Internal Server error, check your wp-content folder. You should have a file called debug.log that lists all the errors and warnings that your server has thrown. The last line usually tells you what the problem was (unless someone else has hit your site in the meantime)