narcolepticnerd

unless you know for sure that content is missing why do you need to restore a backup?

Hostgator usually gives you shell access you can go to the root web directory and type these commands

find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
chmod 660 wp-config.php

If no shell access use a file manager and change perms make sure subdirectories are chosen use 755 for all folders and 644 for all files. You might need to read this

That honestly sounds like permissions

all files should be 644
all directories should be 755
wp-config.php should be 660

permissions is enough to show a error 500

if something were wrong with sql it would say unable to connect to database