500 error codes caused by W3 Total Cache plugin?
-
Hello Everyone,
I operate a site (http://www.nationalbankruptcyforum.com) that has been receiving 500 error codes in Webmaster Tools as of late. This morning, webmaster tools showed 129 500 crawling errors. I've included one of the URLs that contained an error message here: http://www.nationalbankruptcyforum.com/marriage-and-bankruptcy/do-my-wife-and-i-both-have-to-file-for-bankruptcy/
I've been getting these errors now for about 3 weeks and they've mostly been on obscure, strange URLs (lots of numbers etc.) however, this morning they started showing up on pages that will actually be trafficked by users. I'm really not sure where they're coming from, although I do believe it's a software issue as I've had my hosting company take a look to no avail.
I have had some development work done recently and am running the W3 Total Cache plugin (my site is built on WP). I also run the Yoast SEO plugin and rely on it to publish an XML sitemap among other things.
Anyone have any idea where these 500 errors originate from?
Thanks,
John
-
Dan, thanks for taking the time to look into this, I've sent your answer along to my developer, I'll update the thread if we find something that could help out other readers.
-
Hi John
I've checked this out a few times today, and tossed it around with a few other Moz people.
When I crawled the site earlier today with Screaming Frog, I got all the 500 errors you describe on the "normal" pages.
Now when I crawl the site I only get the "weird" pages with the unusual URLs.
We don't think this has to do with either Yoast of W3 Total Cache causing any of it. As far as what caused 500's on the "normal" pages, its hard to tell now. They loaded fine in my browser when I checked earlier.
But I strongly suspect maybe something going wrong in .htaccess for those stranger URLs.
Not sure why those URLs exist like that in the first place - they should all be "clean" whenever possible with the question marks etc in them. That'd be the first place I'd get straightened out. Check permalink settings or maybe a theme setting? Or did someone do something custom to the .htaccess file?
Get your URLs operating correctly. Then if the 500s still exist, you know its a different matter but at least you've narrowed it down and correct the URLs.
Hope this helps!
-Dan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirect chain error free htaccess code for website
i want to redirect domain, example.com to https://www.example.com, is anyone can help me to provide redirect chain error free ht-access code. I implemented this htaccess code on the website and mhy site show on the moz redirect chain error RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=""
Technical SEO | | truehab
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\s//+(.)\sHTTP/[0-9.]+$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\s(./)/+\sHTTP/[0-9.]+$
RewriteRule .* http://%{HTTP_HOST}/%1 [R=301,L]0 -
Plugins and SEO
I'd like some expert guidance. I've searched for a theme that does what I want and finally found something I like, but I'm wondering what you all think I should do to increase it's searchability. The plugin has all the listings and styling. All I need to do is past the code into the wordpress site ad voila! I have a page. Using the widget lets me allow upvotes and provide map etc. But it means the content is inside the widget instead of on the page. What would you modify if you wanted to keep the theme & widget to get the best results. http://best-of-sacramento.com/dentists This is my staging site.
Technical SEO | | julie-getonthemap1 -
Error after scanning with browseo.net
Good day! I have done a scan on my site with browseo.net ( and a few other similar scanners ) and got the mess seen in the screenshot. I've tried deleting all the files in the website folder, replace it with a single image file, but it still shows the same error. What could this mean and should i be worried? P.S Found my answer after contacting the helpful support of browseo.net : It took me some time to figure out what was going on, but it seems as if you are mixing content types. Browsers are quite smart when it comes to interpreting the contents, so they are much more forgiving than we are. Browseo crawls your website and detects that you are setting utf-8 as part of the meta information. By doing so, it converts the content in a different character encoding then what they are supposed to be. In a quick test, I tried to fetch the content type based on the response object, but without any success. So I am suspecting that in reality your content is not utf-8 encoded when you parse it into joomla. The wrong character type is then carried over for the body (which explains why we can still read the header information). All of this explains the error. In order for it to work in browseo, you’d have to set the content type correctly, or convert your own content into utf-8 before parsing. It may be that you are either storing this incorrectly in the database (check your db settings for a different content type other than utf-8) or that other settings are a bit messed up. The good news is, that google is probably interpreting your websites correctly, so you won’t be punished for this, but perhaps something to look into… From Paul Piper VKNNnAL.png?1
Technical SEO | | AlexElks0 -
Search Term not appearing in On-Page Grader but is in code?
Hi, I have never had this issue in the past, but I am working on a website currently which is - http://hrfoundations.co.uk I didn't develop this website and the pages are in separate folders on the FTP which I have never come across before but hey ho. Anyway I have added the search term (HR Consultancy West Midlands) to the about us page in the h1, title and description however when I run the On-Page Grader it only says that I have entered it within the body which I haven't even done yet. When I view the page source it has defiantly been uploaded and the search terms are there, I have tried checking the spelling incase I spelt it incorrectly and I still can't seem to find the issue. Has anyone else experience this in the past, I'm going to go away now and check the code for any unclosed divs etc to see if that may be causing any issue's. Thanks Chris
Technical SEO | | chrissmithps0 -
403 forbidden error how to solve them
hi, i have been using a great tool today called screaming frog which was shown to me by Thomas Zickell when i used the tool i found some worrying things for my site www.in2town.co.uk. what i have found is, i have a large number of 403 forbidden status on my home page and i do not know why here is an example http://www.in2town.co.uk/emmerdale/emmerdale-debbie-hits-rock-bottom it loads fine but on the tool it shows it as an error and shows it as having no meta tags or anything but there is meta tags in there can anyone please let me know how to solve this and why it has happened many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Best way to fix a whole bunch of 500 server errors that Google has indexed?
I got a notification from Google Webmaster tools saying that they've found a whole bunch of server errors. It looks like it is because an earlier version of the site I'm doing some work for had those URLs, but the new site does not. In any case, there are now thousands of these pages in their index that error out. If I wanted to simply remove them all from the index, which is my best option: Disallow all 1,000 or so pages in the robots.txt ? Put the meta noindex in the headers of each of those pages ? Rel canonical to a relevant page ? Redirect to a relevant page ? Wait for Google to just figure it out and remove them naturally ? Submit each URL to the GWT removal tool ? Something else ? Thanks a lot for the help...
Technical SEO | | jim_shook0 -
Mobile Wordpress Plugins - keep look the same
Hello... I'm looking for some advice on Wordpress plugins to make my site optimized for mobile visitors. There are tons of plugins to choose from, but I'm looking for something that will keep the look of the site the same, just optimized to perform and view better on mobile devices.. Does anyone have any advice on good Wordpress plugins that will help accomplish what I'm looking for? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Thesis Vs Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin
Hi All. I've noticed some issues between the thesis themes and Yoast's plugin, namely, thesis doesn't recognise Yoast's plugin in for title tag and meta description. Is there a way to overide this?
Technical SEO | | PerchDigital0