BuddyPress.org

First of all, an Error 500 (internal server error) message usually means something is not working properly with one of the software components on you server. It is not directly a WordPress or BuddyPress issue.

I’m guessing it’s an issue with your PHP install. Forcing the server to run PHP 5 instead of 4 may do the trick–assuming your site is being served under PHP 4. This is just an initial guess. See these threads for more detail:

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/error-500-internal-server-error-an-internal-server-error-has-occured-please#post-23821

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/500-error-after-uploading-buddypress-102#post-18421

However, there could be something else causing the problem. What you need to do is distill your environment down to the lowest common denominator. Make sure WordPress is working fine by itself before installing BuddyPress. To do that, you deactivate all other plugins and test WP by itself. If it is working without issue, then you reinstall BP and activate. You should not have any other plugins besides BP activated and you should be using the default theme that comes with BP when testing.

By the way, I suggest doing a clean install of BuddyPress. This means making sure the entire BP directory is removed and then starting over with a clean install of BP. Of course, as always, backup any data before you do any upgrades or reinstalls.

If you do not have any issues with WP running only the BP plugin using the default BP theme, then you know it has something to do with a custom theme, one of your other plugins, or some combination of the two.

You then start going back up the ladder one step at a time. Switch the default BP theme to your custom theme. Does the problem return? It not, then is has to do with your plugins. Activate one plugin at a time until the issue returns.

But, with an Error 500, I’m guessing it is something outside of WP and BP causing the issue. Show the links above to your hosting firm. They are the only ones that can help you.

Also, as another resource, search the WordPress forums to see if anyone there has reported a similar issue.

Dragging things back to opening post I noticed a reference to only having 20MB HD space remaining! is that serious and accurate?

I can’t vouch for WPMU/BP requirements but can tell you that in certain circumstances this could prove fatal for instance as an example We have production servers for a bespoke application we run (nothing to do with BP) this application has a series of tasks to run periodically throughout the day with the big ones being data import and processing of property details along with Images to be resized and duplicated, one of our tasks ran into issues where it wasn’t deleting the original file imports and simply stacking them up in it’s import folder resulting in ever increasing number of files until that one folder had 80GB of images! this crashed our tasks completely as available HD space had been reduced to less than a few MB and all tasks failed as they simply couldn’t create temp space where required.

If you can definitely increase you available HD space You will need it ultimately if you are allowing blogs to be created and/or user uploads to occur.

Hmm however ‘unlimited’ is somewhat of a misnomer, there isn’t really such a thing!

I’m afraid that google search does not really throw up any particularly good hosts or ones hugely suited to WP/BP

Far more important than unlimited space and bandwidth is a server set up to accommodate WP & BP, that will tend to rule out shared hosting or reseller hosting as you might not be able to configure crucial aspects of the server.

A VPS solution is the best starting point really and even cheap/basic plans should provide enough HD space and bandwidth initially.

I do stress the word ‘Tend’ in the above

It might be worth looking at the hosts that WP recommend as they are naturally all suited to WP WPMU BP

tbh having looked at your hosts site as well I wouldn’t have been able top pass a judgement as to whether they were big or small, there are a lot of factors involved in good hosting and these are not necessarilly apparent just by looking at a site.

If they have offered to tweak settings to you requirements that is a good sign, good customer support counts for a great deal with hosting.

If your happy with this host I would stick with them, especially if they are willing to tune things as you need them.

As for basic requirements you need Apache to allow overide so that .htaccess rules will work, you need mem limits for scripts in PHP set quite high (higher than default) PHP version is best at 5.2 or above.

There are probably guides to optimum and required settings if you look around buddypress.org and wordpress.org and perhaps other members will chip in with min requirements for a healthy installation.

Out of interest what sort of hosting account do have presently and what do you plan to upgrade to? and are you intending running WPMU for it’s blog creation capabilities.

Okay, let’s try something else. Back up one step by deactivating BuddyPress once again. Next, make sure that you are using the default WordPress theme. We are trying to make sure that WordPress is working by itself without issue. I assume it is, since you have to activate BP from the Admin panel. But, let’s do this anyway.

Once again, before doing anything, make sure you have backed up your Data and have offsite copies of any non-default themes and your plugins. It is just a standard precaution that makes it much simpler to restore your environment if anything goes wrong.

Next, you’ll want to remove all your plugins from the “plugins” directory. Of course, you first have to be absolutely sure that you have deactivated them all before doing this. You should copy your existing, deactivated plugins into a temporary folder. That way, you can add them back into your empty “plugins” directory after everything is back up and running.

Now, you should have WordPress with the default theme and zero plugins in the “plugins” directory. Make sure that the plugins folder is still there. It should just be empty.

Does WordPress work without issue in this bare-bones setup?

If so, now you reupload the BuddyPress plugin into the empty “plugins” directory. Then, activate it. What happens?

How are you installing BuddyPress. Are you using the plugins search form in WP admin and automatically installing it from there? Are you manually installing it yourself? Or, are you using a service, an install script, that some Web hosting firms provide?

Also, can you confirm for me that WordPress works fine before you installing BuddyPress.

Okay, is WordPress working fine before installing and activating BuddyPress?

Also, which version of WordPress and which version of BuddyPress are you using?

You need to look at your error logs to find out more details–both PHP and Apache logs. Your host should be able to give you access.

Finally, you can try adding this to the top of your .htaccess file:

### Set PHP directives ###

php_value memory_limit 96M

You may need to decrease that if your hosting company has not allocated that much memory for your account. You can try 60 then 30, for instance.

I would not paste a link to your log files.

Just paste the most recent errors, as in the errors that were logged with the most recent attempt at activation. Look at the time stamp. Please don’t include the entire log, messages older than the most recent attempt, nor any duplicate error messages. One of each should be sufficient.

In fact, when debugging an issue like this, it is usually a good idea to clear out the error logs, start with a blank slate. Then, when you have the next issue, you know that any errors in the log are highly relevant.

Glad to hear you’re in business! Sometimes switching hosts is all that is needed.

I’m setting this thread to resolved.