500 Error Moving WP directory to root

  • Resolved Jim McLaughlin

    (@jimmcl61)


    1 year, 11 months ago

    I’m following this procedure exactly (and repeatably), but when I get to step 9, I get a 500 error. (This is the same procedure as this YouTube video, which is useful to confirm the steps.)

    I’m fully backed up, and I’m easily able to recover the site back to its original directory (/wp) from the root, and everything is fine. (This requires a simple fix to the two database parameters changed when making the Settings change.)

    My first thought was that Wordfence was doing something, but disabling it did not fix the issue.

    I welcome any thoughts.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • An error 500 should be reflected in an error log entry. Have a look at the error log of your hosting. You should be able to see what the actual cause is.

    Thread Starter Jim McLaughlin

    (@jimmcl61)

    I saw a couple of firewall rules getting hit, but once I disabled them (for now), I still get the 500.

    In /var/log/apache2/error_log, I don’t see anything pointing to this site, only a bunch of PHP eact-server.ini syntax errors (we’re running an old version of PHP on the server, but the site is using PHP 7.4).

    I’m not much of an admin, so if there is a different error log I should be checking, I welcome the help.

    Thanks, much.

    Thread Starter Jim McLaughlin

    (@jimmcl61)

    A bit of progress (and I uninstalled Wordfence before seeing this). Now the error is:

    Warning: Unknown: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0

    Fatal error: Unknown: Failed opening required ‘/home/corps/public_html/wp/wordfence-waf.php’ (include_path=’.:/opt/cpanel/ea-php74/root/usr/share/pear’) in?Unknown?on line?0

    I got this after moving files to the root folder. This is a link to the original folder (wp) folder, but I don’t know where the link is being referenced. Hunting…

    Thread Starter Jim McLaughlin

    (@jimmcl61)

    This is definitely a Wordfence migration issue. This error shows up often. Sorry for the bother.

    For folks who got this far, when you deactivate WF, you will be walked through a series of steps that will remove WF properly, allowing for the director migration to happen. If I get other errors, I’ll update this, but assume that a proper deactivation of WF before migrating the directory works as WP says it does (which is quite easy, otherwise).

    Thread Starter Jim McLaughlin

    (@jimmcl61)

    [Update: no errors now, though I can’t access site-editor.php for some reason.]

    [Update: no errors now, though I can’t access site-editor.php for some reason.]

    Anything in the logs about this? If you haven’t done so already, turn on WordPress debugging.

    Thread Starter Jim McLaughlin

    (@jimmcl61)

    I set up the debug code in wp-config, and suddenly the problem goes away and there are NO errors in the log in wp-content/debug.log. Very strange behavior. There isn’t even a debug.log file. I think I’ll reinstall WP and see what happens.

    Update: Doing the reinstall, and removing the debug code, returned to the same error. Possibly a theme error?

    Update2: Viewing the site and admin page on my phone, I get no error and I can reach the site editor with no difficulty. Obviously, a browser cache issue now. So frustrating. Viewing on another user/browser instance on the same computer doesn’t show the problem, either. Crazy Chrome.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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