The SEN MasterMind Gem Of The Month: February 2018
The SEN MasterMind Gem Of The Month
for February 2018 is hereby awarded to:
Geoff Cooper
Magically transcending borders, datelines, and time zones, one guy in Australia with a problem gets instant answers and ultimately a solution from another guy in Kansas and a gal in California. It all works seamlessly, almost as if they're in the same room. How cool is that!
As you will see, the following conversational snap-shot is also a good lesson on the importance of maintaining backup systems — and how easily a serious problem can be solved when you do.
Geoff: Hi everyone, was wondering if anyone has experience in dealing with Server 500 errors on Wordpress. Have a new client that has dropped traffic & rankings recently and noticed in Search Console Server 500 errors. Have also done some fetch/render on some pages that indicates the pages are unreachable. I'm not a Wordpress person but my initial reading seems to indicate that they may have a corrupted .htaccess file and/or a PHP memory limitation issue. Would be grateful if anyone has had this problem to give me some advice on whether I'm on the right track. Thanks Geoff
John: Is it all the pages or just specific ones?
Geoff: All the pages from what I can see John - about 350 pages. I have only Fetch/Render about 6 and the same "unreachable" message occurs.
John: Sounds like you need to be looking at reloading from a previous backup when it was working. Have you asked if someone made a change to the site around the time it started crashing?
Geoff: Yes, I have asked whether there was any updates - plugins etc and my contact is has gone back to IT who manage the site. I have also asked whether they have a backup prior to the errors occurring. Would you think we should try and restore...
